


Sanctuary in the Storm

by Dassandre



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Control Issues, Dom/sub, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Idiots in Love, Impact Play, James' Conscience has a Voice, M/M, Oral Sex, Role Reversal, Rough Sex, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Strong James, Strong Q, Suicidal Thoughts, Work In Progress, of a kind - Freeform, oral kink, severe injuries, turning the tables
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2019-10-13 12:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 40,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: Any relationship -- professional or personal -- between two strong personalities is bound to be tense at times.When those personalities belong to James Bond and his Quartermaster -- or to the Quartermaster and his agent as Q would classify the hierarchy -- tense doesn't really begin to cover it at times.But when the two strong-willed men begin to find a haven from the insanity of their lives in the unpredictable storm of each other ... well, anything and everything could happen.





	1. Blaze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts).



> "Sanctuary in the Storm" marks my 40th story in this fandom, and I can think of no better way to celebrate than to write a piece for my dear friend AsheTarasovich whose art, "This Storm Between Us", is the brilliant inspiration for this story.
> 
> Ashe, I hope that this story helps to express even one-tenth the regard I have for you. I love you, my friend.
> 
>  
> 
> Any errors within are mine and mine alone. This is a WiP, but the bulk of it has been written and what hasn't yet been, will be.

_**This Storm Between Us** _

by  AsheTarasovich

* * *

 

 

“You fell in love with a storm. Did you really think you would get out unscathed?”

―  **Nikita Gill**

 

* * *

  
**Blaze** (Scottish): A sudden blast of hot, dry wind.

* * *

 

 

 

“Jesus, fuck!”

Q’s slow, inexorable slide down the length of his cock pulled the curse from Bond’s lips.  So bloody tight -- preparations had been, at best, perfunctory -- it was all James could do not to spend himself the moment Q was fully seated in his lap.  

“Q-”

“Shut  _ up  _ already, would you?  I can’t hear … your voice without …”  Eyes shut, head thrown back, Q groaned and gripped the base of his penis, trying to maintain control,  “I’ve wanted your cock in my arse since ‘bloody big shi’- Fuck! Quit doing that with your hips or this’ll be over in a trice.”  

James stilled though the muscles of his stomach and thighs continued to quiver; the need to buck and thrust was nearly overwhelming, but he could control himself, for a while. He’d followed worse orders in his time.  

For several moments, the only sound in the room was that of their panting, each man trying to stave off the inevitable for a little while longer.  

The offer to come up for drinks had not surprised James, though the dinner invitation Q had issued that afternoon had.  The impromptu meal had gone brilliantly: the conversation as subtly flirtatious, suggestive, and easy as when Q had been in his ear, guiding him to Silva through the Tube tunnels.  But once upstairs, James had not expected to be the one pushed up against the wall of the flat, kissed within an inch of his life with Q’s long fingers gripping his short hair. 

Instinctively his hand had seized Q about the throat, but rather than jerk away or struggle against it, Q had pressed into it, into James, groaning with even greater intent and need.  

It was rather explosive after that.

The sofa in Q’s sitting room.  

That’s as far as they’d made it.  Stripped quickly of his jacket and button-down -- nipples still tingling from the attention Q had wrought on them -- James had only managed to open his flies and push his trousers to his knees before Q had him in hand, then in mouth, and finally … _in_.

Christ.  

James slid his arms around Q’s hips.  His hands splayed across the small of Q’s back beneath the cotton of the open, aubergine button-down sliding off his shoulders.  Moonlight spilt into the room from the gap in the blackout curtains and illuminated Q’s pale skin. 

Flesh that was soft and smooth, outside … and in. 

Q tightened around him.

Bugger! 

Head falling against the cushion behind him, he ground his teeth together. “You. Are. A. Tease.”

Q shook his head and sucked in a breath.  “Adjusting. You’re bloody huge.” 

James opened his eyes when long, slender fingers gripped his shoulder.  Q stared down at him, green eyes fixed on James' for a long moment before he leaned in. Teeth pulled at the curve of James’ ear.  Lips and tongue suckled at the lobe.

Then, finally, in a lust-deepened tenor, came the command. 

“Fuck me, Bond.  Hard.” 

Some orders were so worth following.  

When breath and conscious thought returned, Q pulled himself off and rolled over onto the cushion next to James, lazy and smiling against the arm of the sofa with his own thrown over his head.  Stretched out to his full length, shirt still gaping, hair even more impossibly tousled, he slung his long legs casually over James’ as though they’d done this a hundred times before. “You’re bloody brilliant at that.  Knew you would be. I’d like another go later and again in the morning if you’re amenable.”

“You want me to stay.”   

Q’s grunt was noncommittal. 

“Your call, of course.  I’ve a second bedroom if it would make you more comfortable, but it’s much easier for me to roll over and suck you off if we’re in the same bed.  I rather fancy the idea of getting you to scream my designation when you come.” 

James barked with laughter.  “God you’re a direct, arrogant shite, aren’t you?”

“It’s only arrogance if competency doesn’t fulfill the promise.”

James had to admit thus far, in all their interactions, Q had more than demonstrated his competency.  His extraction from Silva’s island had been flawless, and whilst Q’s eagerness to show off his skills to a new colleague had in part contributed to Silva’s escape from confinement, in James’ opinion, the Quartermaster had more than acquitted himself during the events that followed. They had lost M, but that was hardly Q’s fault.  That blame lay solely with James. 

Q had been there in the aftermath of Skyfall, a lean silhouette against the burning remains of the manor house, efficiently issuing instructions to the containment team whilst Tanner and Mallory dealt with the chaos created by M’s death back at Six.  Shock and injury made Bond’s memory of those ensuing events hazy at best, but two things had stood out clearly before he had been loaded into the helicopter for transfer to London: Q ensuring that old Kincaid was carefully checked over by the medical response team, and the pointed, painful philippic Q had rained down on a junior agent who had dared question Q’s order for a lorry to be brought up from Glasgow to transport the remains of the DB5 back to Six.  

“And there are other considerations, of course,” Q continued.

“Such as?”

The hand over Q’s head gestured vaguely at the room around them.  “Flat’s closer to Six and far more secure than that hotel you’ve been kipping in out in Uxbridge.  Really, Bond.  _ Uxbridge _ ?”  Q nudged James’ stomach with his knee.  The man really was completely comfortable in his own skin and space.   “Mallory’s calling you in after the reading of M’s will tomorrow. Off to Cairo.  I’ll kit you out after your briefing.

James ran his hands up the long length of Q’s thighs, fingers stopping just short of Q’s groin.  He felt casual. Calm. At peace with Q in a way that -- 

Why he wasn’t questioning this level of intimacy?

“Know so much, do you?” he found himself asking instead. 

“More than you should ever have to concern yourself with if I do my job right.”   Q’s response was sober and serious in a way that belied the playful tone in his offer of a place to stay.

Far too serious in James’ opinion.  That just wouldn’t do. James drew a fingertip along the crease of flesh that joined Q’s leg to his body. 

Q groaned, his hips lifting to seek out Bond’s touch, but James gripped Q’s thighs, pinning his new lover to the sofa as he rolled out to settle on top of him.  Hand and lips and teeth set about making that groan continuous.

“Wha- wha-?” Q tried to ask as James alternated between licking and sucking at the smooth flesh at the base of his cock.

James’ gaze trailed up the length of Q’s body until he was looking into those impossibly luminous green eyes.  His lips brushed the tip of Q’s penis as he spoke. “Taking you up on your offer, Quartermaster. And If I do  _ my _ job right … my designation will be the only one shouted tonight.”  

“Oh, fuck me,” Q huffed as James took him deep.

 

 

 

 


	2. Moor-Gallop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q was completely comfortable with his desires, guiding James in what he liked, how he liked it and -- in contrast to the majority of James’ sexual partners in and out of the field -- quite eager to reciprocate. 
> 
> They slept little, and whilst James had been left completely shagged out, he also couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt so completely energised and alive.
> 
> Thankfully, Mallory was called into an emergency meeting with the foreign secretary which kept Bond from technically being late to his meeting with the new M: apparently, James had a thing for dirtying freshly showered Quartermasters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to thank two people when I posted the first chapter. The fabulous [Springbok7](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Springbok7), and the ever-supportive [Boffin1710](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710). They're my betas (and hand-holders) on this story, and I couldn't do it without them. Any errors that still exist are mine to own.
> 
> Ta, you two. Adore you both!
> 
> A huge shout out also goes to [Chestnut_NOLA](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_NOLA) without whom the 00Q RBB wouldn't exist. Thank you for your organization and tireless support, Lo!

**Moor-Gallop** (English):  A sudden, unexpected squall across the moors.

* * *

  
  


Designations weren’t the only things shouted or groaned during the rest of that night.  

Nor the next morning.   

Q was highly responsive and arousingly vocal, his tenor dropping in such a way that James found himself growing hard in response to the boffin’s lusty moans.   He brushed away James’ off-hand comment about waking the neighbours by assuring him that he’d had soundproofing installed as part of the Six-funded renovation when he took possession of the vetted flat three years ago.  

Q was also completely comfortable with his desires, guiding James in what he liked, how he liked it and -- in contrast to the majority of James’ sexual partners in and out of the field -- quite eager to reciprocate.  

They slept little, and whilst James had been left completely shagged out, he also couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt so completely energised and alive.

Thankfully, Mallory was called into an emergency meeting with the foreign secretary which kept Bond from  _ technically _ being late to his meeting with the new M:  apparently, James had a thing for dirtying freshly showered Quartermasters.

When he and Q finally arrived at Six -- 90 minutes past the Quartermaster’s standard start time -- James had gone up to the roof to enjoy the crisp air of the late autumn morning until summoned by a ceramic bulldog bearing Moneypenny.

“See the Quartermaster for your kit, 007,” M said at the end of the briefing.

“With pleasure, M.”

The pleasure was shockingly short-lived.

“What is this?”  James asked of the third item nestled in the case between his palm-encoded Walther and the radio.  

Still not Christmas.

Q’s brow furrowed.  “An earwig.”

“Yes.  I  _ know _ it’s an earwig.  Why is it in my kit?” James asked, plucking the ‘wig from the foam to inspect it.  Small and compact, it looked like no earwig he had ever used before.

“How else would I communicate with you in the field?  Smoke signals are a bit unreliable in this day and age,” Q snickered.

“Is there something wrong with my mobile?”

“Mobile to your ear for instructions whilst chatting up your mark?  Hardly covert, 007.”

James’ gaze snapped from the tech to the Quartermaster.  “What do you mean …  _ instructions _ ?”

Q’s smile vanished.  

He pressed his palms to the top of the workstation between them and looked at James from beneath his fringe.  His voice was crisp. Pointed. Irritated. As far from the loose, languid timbre of the night before as it was possible to be.  

“Double-O Seven, I’ll dispense with asking whether you read the detailed memo I sent out a fortnight ago because, despite the fact you’ve been ‘resurrected’ this last six weeks, it’s suddenly quite clear to me you have not.  Had you done, you would know that an earwig is now standard equipment in a field operative’s kit so that specially trained TSS agents such as myself, R, and Ms Moore over there can guide and assist our Double-O agents through their missions, providing up-to-date, live support and directives through the duration of the assignment.”

“The fuck --”  Bond shoved the ‘wig back into the foam and took up the Walther.  He slid it into his shoulder holster and pocketed its spare clip and the radio before turning on his heel for the doors.  “I’ll be in contact once I’ve finished up in Cairo,” he said to the room at large. 

James was just to the exit when the ancient bulkheads, installed by Churchill’s men, slid shut in front of him.  He stuttered to a halt at the beep of an electronic lock engaging and glared at the doors before spinning about to demand they be open-

They were gone.  The two dozen or so Q-Branch technicians and staffers -- Q’s ‘minions’ as they had started calling themselves -- had disappeared.  

Only Q remained.  He stood in the centre of the branch, arms crossed over his purple and green patterned cardi with a look of carefully contained fury on his face.   

“Open the door, Q!”  Bond’s fury was not quite as contained.

“There’s no point in looking for other egress points, 007,” Q said, noting the way Bond’s eyes immediately sought out other exits.  “Q-Branch is on lockdown.”

“Unlock it.”

“No.”  Feet planted so solidly on the concrete floor as though they grew there, Q stood his ground in the face of the Double-O who stormed toward him.

“Unlock. It.”

Q held up the earwig in the narrow space that now existed between them.  “ _ This _ is the key to unlocking the doors.”

“I don’t need you in my ear to do my job, Quartermaster,” James snapped.  “I’ve done just fine completing my missions on my own this last decade.”

“I’ve an entire hard drive of data on just how  _ fine _ your missions have gone over the years, 007, but we’ll save that discussion for another time.  This is a programme that has been tested in the field over the last year, sanctioned and approved by Mansfield months before her death, and it is the S.O.P. for all missions involving agents of senior status and up.”

“I work alone.”

“You work _ ed _ \-- past tense -- alone.  Now you work with me ... or R, or Ms Moore, if you prefer.  Or you do not work at all.”

“You can’t make that decision.”

“I think you’ll find I can, 007.  Given your previous lone wolf tendencies, it stands to reason you’re unfamiliar with the organisational hierarchy of the SIS.  You’ve kept your interactions mostly to the previous M, Tanner on occasion, and Boothroyd only when  _ you _ needed something.  As Quartermaster, he, and now  _ I, _ am second only to M in authority and -- since the approval of the new scheme -- have direct oversight of mission operations.  If I feel an agent is in any way inadequate for the task, I  _ will _ pull them from the assignment.”  

“Why you arrogant, jumped up little shite!”

“I’ve been called far worse by people far better than you.”

Things rather deteriorated from there.

It ultimately took an exasperated Mallory with 003 in the room ready to go to Cairo before Bond would take the earwig.  

“Don’t even think about destroying it 007, or I’ll have you doing nothing but PPO for Shadow Cabinet MPs upon your return,” Mallory warned.

James only  _ just _ managed to make the flight to Cairo.  As the plane flew over the Channel, he tried not to think too much about Q, the upcoming ‘guided’ mission, or how even though it had taken nearly every ounce of restraint not to strangle his new Quartermaster, it had taken even more for him not to strip him bare and fuck him up against his own sodding workstation.  

Stubborn.  

Brilliant.

With a spine of steel.  

Q hadn’t yielded in the face of James’ anger.  It was as beguiling as it was infuriating, and he couldn’t deny the thrill of … something that matching wills with his Quartermaster had sent dancing along his nerves.

Q was captivating and maddening.

As much as he hated it, James found he couldn’t quite hold back the smirk that pulled at his lips. This could be quite marvellous.

Provided they didn’t kill each other first.

  
  
  



	3. Cat's Nose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If James Bond had wanted to be micromanaged, he’d have become a bloody banker, fuck you very much.

**Cat’s Nose** (English):  A cool, northwesterly wind

* * *

  
  


Cairo went perfectly.

Privately.  Grudgingly. James had to admit he’d never had a mission go so smoothly.  

That wasn’t to say there weren’t the usual unexpected hitches, scrapes, and near-deadly encounters with schools of electronic piranha, but at each turn, Q was there in his ear guiding him in a new direction, supplying an electronic lock code, or hacking in with a well-timed virus to turn the bloody cyberfish against each other.

Only Mallory’s promise of a three-month suspension -- “The rest of the agents acquitted themselves quite well during your recent death.  In a time of crisis, I might add, so I think they can withstand your lengthy suspension now.” -- in addition to the PPO threat had kept James from crushing the earwig under the heel of his mahogany-capped derby brogue the minute he stepped out of Q-Branch.

Once in Cairo … well, he hadn’t made things easy on the Quartermaster.  He’d been cool and remote. Professional _ ish _ . But distantly so.  Monosyllabic and brusque, when he could get away with it.  

Okay, so Alec would’ve called him out for being a sullen, difficult arse, and he’d be right.   

_You’re such a sodding toddler,_ _James_ , he heard Alec say in his head -- the irony that years ago his conscience, what remained of it, had taken on the voice of Alec Trevelyan was not lost on him --   _Suck it up. Do your job.  Listen to the Quartermaster. And stop being such a fucking wanker!_

James had tried, sort of, but it rankled in his mind that the autonomy he had enjoyed and had made good use of -- no matter  _ what _ the data on Q’s bloody hard drive might say -- for nearly ten years could be summarily stripped without so much as a by your leave.

If James Bond had wanted to be micromanaged, he’d have become a bloody banker, fuck you very much.

Q, however, had been the consummate professional.  Legitimately so. If the Quartermaster had felt any residual anger or frustration from their dust-up in Q-Branch, he never let on.  

At least not overtly.  Every interaction, every painfully  _ polite _ conversation was precise, detailed, informative, beneficial.

Soulless.

The quick humour and light flirtation that had coloured their conversation during the Silva affair was notably, sorely absent.  James knew he had only himself to blame, but for some reason, he’d been unable to shift out of ‘acting like a right bastard’ mode.

And suddenly Cairo was over.  Done. Bad guys dead. Intel obtained.  Time to go home.

Q was as coolly efficient in wrapping things up as he had been throughout the operation.

“Your debrief with Mallory is two days hence at 1345.  Travel itinerary is being sent to your mobile, and Ms Moore will be available should you have need of us en route to London. Thank you for your service in Egypt, 007.  Safe journey home. Quartermaster signing off.”

And he was gone

It wasn’t until Q was no longer there that James realised how much -- and how quickly -- he had come to appreciate and rely upon the gentle tenor in his ear and the brilliant, witty mind that supplied it.

Fuck.

It was why nine hours later, after returning to Six with the excuse of turning in his kit and discovering the Quartermaster’s office dark, James found himself knocking on the door to Q’s flat. 

To his surprise, a grim-faced Q granted him entry.

“May I get you something to drink?”

“No.  Thank you.  I’m fine.”

“Good.  I wasn’t keen on the offer, but Mummy made sure her boys learnt manners.  Now tell me, 007, why are you darkening my door at half two in the morning?”

James hid his wince at the cut in Q’s voice.  At the sound of his designation said in a tone so different than the last time he heard it in this room.  

_ Your own damn fault, you fucking arse. _

Shut  _ up _ , Alec.

They faced each other in the middle of the sitting room.  Hands on his hips, Q was dressed in a pair of plaid pyjama bottoms, hand knit socks, and an oversized jumper that hung on his frame.  His hair was an absolute mess -- reminding James of what his own fingers had done to it a fortnight earlier -- but Q was too alert for James to have woken him in spite of the late hour.  An open laptop on the coffee table next to a steaming cuppa confirmed it.

“I wanted to talk to you about the mission.  About my  _ reaction _ to the mission.”

“This is my  _ home _ , 007.  Not the office,”  Q headed for the door, intent upon escorting Bond out.  “Please leave. Schedule something with my assistant, Ajay, for --”

“Wait.  Q. Look, this isn’t easy for me, but I’d like to explain if you’ll let me.”

Q stopped at the tone in Bond’s voice.  Double-Os  _ didn’t _ beg.  Even if the ‘please’ itself was technically absent.   After a beat, he turned around. His expression shuttered.  “Go on.”

James knew what he wanted to say: he’d thought of little else during the flight home, in fact.  “It was a shock, learning my autonomy was gone. Having had no input or warning -- okay yes, I’ll be better at reading email, just uncock your eyebrow for now, would you?!” 

Q scowled and crossed his arms but said nothing, so James continued.  “I reacted badly and behaved poorly toward you and your team on mission.  I’m … I’m not proud of that. I’d like to look at the data you collected.  Recordings, too, of the other ops you’ve run this way if you have them. I’m not ready to … Look.  I need more than  _ one _ mission, but this one … Cairo … it was … good.”

Q stood still so long -- not blinking, barely seeming to breath -- that James began to wonder if-

“Though the words ‘I’m sorry’ were notably absent, I’ll take that  _ as _ an apology, and I’ll take that apology,” Q said, relaxing his rigid posture.  He ran his hand through his hair. “For my own part, I should have followed through and ensured you had been briefed on  _ everything _ prior to meeting with Mallory.  You were still dead when the first announcement of the programme was made, and you’d not been in London with any great frequency during the testing phase, so that’s on me.”

“Though the words ‘I’m sorry’ were notably absent-”

“Twine and a toothpick, 007.  Finish that sentence, and that’s all you’ll find in the kit for your next mission.”

James smiled at Q’s irritated glare, but his demeanour had most certainly thawed.  He sat down on the arm of the sofa and looked at his hands. “I  _ want _ to be able to work with you, Q, but-”

“Old dogs, new tricks,” Q said so gently that James couldn’t help but nod.

“Something like that, yeah.”

Q plucked his laptop off the coffee table and curled up in his favourite corner of the dark leather sofa.  “I’ll have all the data made available to you in the morning,” he said with a quick glance at the agent as he began typing away at the keyboard.  “We’ll find a way to make this work, Bond.”

“Is that it?”  Bond’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.  

“Is that what?”

“An explanation and a not-quite-apology and we’re sorted?”

“ _ We’re _ sorted, yes.  Provided you don’t pull that kind of shite again.  It’s unworthy of the Service. As far as the rest of my team is concerned, you will need to atone for your sins.  They’re particularly fond of breakfast pastries, takeaway from Mango Indian, and macarons from Patisserie Sainte Anne.  A week’s worth ought to do.” 

“That’s a lot of food.”

Q closed the lid of his laptop, steepled his hands atop it, and looked critically at Bond as the man edged onto the cushion next to him.  

“They deserve it.  More importantly, they deserve your respect.  Not everything I say in your ear is mine alone, 007.   The techs you saw in Q-Branch the other day aren’t for show. I have 56 people working three different shifts.  They’re overworked and underpaid and wholly dedicated to Six’s overall mission. Eighty percent of the time, each step I guide you, each piece of information or intel I provide is the result of  _ their _ tireless efforts -- research, analysis, cryptography, coding, hacking -- all so I can share it with you to make the mission go more smoothly.”

James nodded.  “So I can achieve the objective.”  Embarrassingly, he had never given much thought to  _ how _ the intel he received during his missions came to him.  James had only ever cared that it  _ did _ come and was accurate.  The human element behind it had never occurred to him.

“The objective?  Yes, but there’s another reason.”

“What’s that?”

“I prefer to bring my intelligence operatives home  _ alive _ .”   

Q stood, tucked his laptop under his arm, and grabbed his cuppa.   “Clean towels are in the airing cupboard down the corridor.  Spare room is on the right.  You’ll find a box in there with the items you left behind at the hotel. Suits are in the wardrobe.  The hotel was kicking up a fuss with HR, so I took the liberty of having it all packed up and brought here.”  

He drained his mug and set it on the pass-through to the kitchen.  “Stay. A night. A week. Or go. It’s up to you. But there’s a spare tablet on the table next to the bed.  Secure. I’ve sent the prospectus and preliminary research upon which the programme is built to your email. Best read it first.  It will contextualise the rest of the data when you get it. Sleep well, 007.”

“Wait!” James jumped up from the sofa.  Q turned and came back down the corridor that led to the bedrooms.

“Make use of what little’s in the fridge if you’re hungry, but I’ve been up the last 36 hours finishing up a mission with a cantankerous arse of an agent, and I’m bloody well knackered.”

“You brought my things here?”

“It was a hotel in  _ Uxbridge _ , 007.  Besides …”

“What?”

“Well, I believe I told you I wanted to suck your cock in the morning.  Easier to do when you’re not in sodding Uxbridge.”

“I thought you mean  _ that _ morning.”

Q’s mouth turned down in a moue of disappointment.  “Are all agents such narrow thinkers or is it just you?”  He sighed and shook his head and disappeared down the corridor.  “Good night, James. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely suck you in the morning.”  

It was the first time in years James Bond was left without a pithy comeback.   
  
  


* * *

If you're interested in the shoes James didn't destroy the earwig with, you can find them here: [Joseph Cheney & Sons](https://www.cheaney.co.uk/tenterden-capped-derby-brogue-in-mahogany-grain-leather-p115)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get the first three chapters out relatively quickly, but I'll be pushing back the next few updates for a bit so I can keep ahead of the writing for the last few chapters. I don't want to leave people hanging if I find myself crunched for time to write. Which tends to happen.
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you all for the positive and enthusiastic comments. I am so thrilled you're enjoying this story. More, more more. :) I clearly have no shame.


	4. Hig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q’s response whenever James brought up his living situation was always the same: “Stay. Go. It’s up to you.”
> 
> So James stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comments thus far have been absolutely wonderful and such a positive motivation for my writing. Thank you all so much. I hope you will continue letting me know your thoughts as these two idiots continue their journey.

**Hig** (English): a sharp, short-lived storm of rain or wind. 

* * *

  
  


Q did, in fact, suck James’ cock the next morning, and so expertly, too, that James -- unprepared for the flood of sensations being pulled out of him -- hadn’t even noticed the man was already dressed for work.  When he finished, and James was little more than an insensible, sated mess sprawled out on his mattress, Q downed his cuppa and donned his anorak before Bond managed to pull himself together enough to follow him out to the kitchen.  

That five minutes after Q dashed off to work James was still sat atop the coffee table wearing only his pants, staring at the front door with a look on his face that probably screamed ‘sucked stupid’ was something  _ no one _ ever need know about.

A blowjob quickly became the way he woke most mornings as James never quite managed to search for a place of his own between missions.  Q’s response whenever James brought up his living situation was always the same: “Stay. Go. It’s up to you.” 

So James stayed.

It became a thing between them, a suck in the morning when they were both in the flat.  And as Q obviously had a passion  _ and _ a talent for it, James would have been stupid to argue.  An unlocked bedroom door signalled his tacit consent, so on those mornings, Q would crawl onto James’ bed in the spare room -- sometimes ready for work, other days in his jim-jams -- and suck James stupid.  

Q made it clear from the outset that reciprocation was not necessary, but whilst James’ behaviour on and off missions certainly never kept Q from denying  _ himself _ whatever pleasure he took in their morning blowies, James quickly learned to gauge how favourably he sat in the Quartermaster’s eyes by the version of blowjob he got, 

If he was in Q’s good graces, he was left thoroughly debauched, wrung out from the pleasure of it, fully sated and delightfully satisfied.

If James was on Q’s shitelist, however ...  

Q still finished him off.  Still completed the ‘job’, but -- Oh! -- he knew how to play Bond’s body like a set o’ pipes.  How to quash the building sensation so that at the end of it, even though James had come, he was left frustrated, almost desperate.  

Worse?  He couldn’t figure out how in the Hell Q was able to do that to him.  He was 007 for Christ’s sake! Infamous for his seduction skills and sexual prowess.  He of all people should not be so easily manipulated! 

Consequently, on  _ those _ mornings, James was left both enraged and bewildered at the very notion that a buttoned-up, arrogant, despotic boffin with delusions of his own godhood could possibly be a better lover than he, James ‘fucking’ Bond.

“And yet you still stay,” Q replied with a suggestive twist to his mouth and a glint of mischief in his eyes when James said as much after Q returned from Six on the night of such a morn.

James did  _ not _ slam the door to the spare bedroom behind him in response.  

He absolutely did not!  

He didn’t lock it either.

The opportunity for retribution came three days later.

James had just about finished cleaning up after his workout when Master Yung’s introductory self-defence session ended, and the locker room was filled with not-quite-so-eager-as-once-they-were trainees who’d all had their arses handed to them by their instructor.   

“Say again?” he asked, pressing a finger to his ear to block out the noise of the newbies’ groans and complaints.  

Lightweights.  

“I’ve had a spot of bother with the car,” Q repeated on the other end of the mobile.  “Moneypenny says she won’t be able to get anyone out to me for at least two hours and a cab is impossible.  But I’ve a meeting with Mallory and the Deputy Foreign Secretary at 1700. Can you help, Bond?”

“Breakdown cover?”  James snugged the phone against his shoulder as he slipped into a pair of navy trousers and tucked in his white button-down.

“Lapsed.” 

“Seriously?  Q-”

“Cling film and gaffers tape in your kit, 007, if you finish that thought.   I haven’t driven outside of London in over a year. Hell, I haven’t had to drive the car at _all_ in three months, so spare me the lecture.  I  _ know _ .”  The normally unflappable Q did sound a bit exasperated.  

James couldn’t help but smile.  “Fine. Where are you?” 

“I’m just outside Windsor.”  Q had left early that morning to meet with the heads of Six’s explosives lab in Dorney.  “I’ll have R send you the exact coordinates for the GPS. Thank you, Bond.”

“What did you say was wrong with the car?”  James couldn’t imagine there were many things the Quartermaster -- given his skill with and knowledge of automobiles -- couldn’t attend to himself.  

“See you soon.”  And Q was gone.

James looked at the phone in his hand for a moment, shrugged, and pocketed it to finish dressing.  He’d find out soon enough.

“You’re  _ not _ serious,” James said little over an hour later.  He had pulled his Jag up behind Q’s Prius -- one he’d seen, and mocked, in the underground garage at the flat -- along the side of a quiet road outside Windsor.  Q stood next to the driver’s side corner of the boot, messenger bag in hand, ready to hop in, but James raised a hand and climbed out. 

“In a bit of a rush, Bond.  I’ll arrange to have it towed back to Six for repair,” Q said, stepping in front of the agent, urging him to climb back in the car.  James raised an eyebrow. Q clearly didn’t want him to see what the problem was.

Looking at it now, James couldn’t blame him.

“It’s a flat tyre.”

“I know it’s a flat tyre, Bond.”

“You brought me all the way out here -- well past sodding Uxbridge, I might add -- because of a flat tyre?”  He peered into the back where an open, unused kit with a scissor jack and a wheel nut wrench sat on the fabric-covered seat.  He looked at the boffin and gestured at the tyre. “Why didn’t you just change it?”

Q’s muttered answer was lost to the wind rush of a passing lorry.  

“What was that?” James asked, turning to face him.

“I don’t know how, alright!”

_ The fuck?   _

That much we agree upon, Alec.

A thousand questions about how the bloody Quartermaster of MI6 -- whose technological, tinkering, and automotive skills were renowned and aggressively sought after by agencies throughout the intelligence community -- couldn’t change a flat tyre flooded his mind.  Each was as potentially humbling and damning as the ones James had been fixated on about himself for days now. 

And now all he had to do was pick the brightest bloom from the bouquet of disgrace Q had just handed him and retribution was his!  

“Take off your jacket,” James said instead.  He opened the back door and draped his over the driver’s seat, pocketed his cufflinks, and rolled up his sleeves.

Q gaped at him.  He’d been bracing for the onslaught, and when it hadn’t come …

“Unless you want it to get soiled.”  James shrugged and set the kit on the ground next to the car.  “I’m teaching you how to do this.”

The Quartermaster recovered quickly and shook his head.  “Bond, I don’t have time for-”

“This will take 30 minutes.  Your meeting is in two hours.  I’m  _ not _ driving you back for this.”  His next words echoed the ones so oft repeated in the flat those first weeks:  “Learn or stay. It’s up to you.” 

Q’s glare was such that if James  _ hadn’t _ been holding all the cards, he might actually be concerned.  He’d seen what a justifiably indignant Quartermaster was capable of doing.  He didn’t want to consider what baseless anger might result in. 

Though the bulk of his own missions since Cairo had not been as fraught with tension as the first, James was still very much a work in progress.  Q had been patient with him, on the whole. Double-O Five, however, was still trying to atone for Pernik and the results of what choosing to go with his gut had generated.   

Jack was one of the most stoic of agents, but James had been in Q-Branch when Jack came out of Q’s largely sound-proof office, and the word to best describe the look on the agent’s face was ‘shaken.’  Rumour had it M’s anger had nothing on Q’s castigation of the agent, but then nine civils had lost their lives in the bridge collapse. Needless deaths. Had 005 only listened to the intelligence Q-Branch had provided on the situation ...

This, however, was not that, and whilst Q was at times a fiery, obstinate shite, he was ultimately a reasonable man.  

His “Fine,” was more of a huff, but he dropped his messenger bag and began to disrobe in the same fashion James had done.   “Show me.”

With Q couched at his side, James laid out the tools from the kit.  “We’ll have this done in a tick …”

It was nearly midnight by the time Q returned to the flat after his meetings.  James was reading in a comfortable chair near the window Q insisted he appropriate for his own particular use.  He set a bag of takeaway on the coffee table, draped his anorak over the unused armchair, then curled up in his traditional spot on the sofa closest to Bond.

“Never seemed to find the time, you see.  Too much to perfect on the technological end of things that points of basic maintenance … well, I’d always intended to get ‘round to it.  Silly that I haven’t,” Q said by way of explanation of his tyre-changing deficiencies.

“There’s not much I don’t know about maintenance and repair,”  James said, slipping a mark between the pages and closing the book.  “Kincade. A way to keep me out of trouble during long Scottish winters.  I can’t do what you can, though. I don’t even know how you manage to make it all work, yet it always does.  Don’t worry. I won’t say anything to your minions.”

Q looked at him in surprise.  “Christ, Bond, I never thought you would.  It was just ...”

“Uncomfortable when it comes to light you’re maybe not the best at things you think you excel at?”

“Yes,”  Q whispered after a moment.  “And I owe you an apology for that.”

James laughed.  “What? For playing my cock like a pipe for music only you can dance to?”

Q snorted.  “I’m absolutely  _ not _ apologising for that!  You deserve what you get.  It’s not like you don’t come, and you could just lock the door.”  Q leaned in closer, green eyes filled again with that bizarre glint of sober mischief that rarely boded well for James.  “Start returning all of her Majesty’s equipment in one piece on a regular basis, and I’ll show you what I’m really capable of doing to your cock.”

James only just held back his groan but there was no disguising the thickening under the light fabric of the sleep trousers he wore.  That voice! “For what then … do you want to apologise?”

Q sobered.  “I mocked your frustration with the situation.   _ That _ was badly done of me.”

They held each other’s gaze.  Nothing else was said about it.  Then or after. But a new understanding remained. 

Q stood, pressed a hand to James’ shoulder as he passed, and disappeared into his bedroom.  James downed the rest of his whisky and turned off his reading lamp. Good a time as any to go to call it a night, he supposed.

“Have the takeaway if you want it,” Q’s voice sounded from the depths of the flat.

“Aren’t you hungry?”  James called out, digging about in the bag.   

“Not for Lo Mein.”

James looked up.   Q had returned and was leant against the entryway.  He wore only his skin which shone in what little moonlight spilt through the parts in the blackout curtains.

God he was gorgeous:  lanky and loose-limbed with just the right amount of toned muscle on his slim frame.   James hadn’t seen Q naked since that first night and morning together and certainly hadn’t spent any time in his bed.  But for their ritual morning kink, there had been no sexual contact between them. 

Takeaway abandoned on the table, James curled a hand around Q’s waist and pulled him close.  “Anything you’d like from the menu?” 

“I’ll defer to the chef in this instance,” Q moaned as James took to nipping at his earlobe.  “I trust he’ll leave me satisfied.”

“Whatever sir desires.” James captured Q’s mouth in a leisurely but intense kiss that ended all but the most basic conversation between them for quite some time. 

Q was sore and sated and nearly asleep when James whispered against his hair, “But I brought everything back in one piece, this time.”

Summoning strength from somewhere, Q rolled in James’ arms and looked at him.  The room was dark save for the light from the street, but Q knew James followed his gaze as he took in the three stitches above James’ left eyebrow, the road rash not yet healed on his right shoulder and hip, the deep bruises that had only just faded to sickly green and yellow along his ribcage.   Q touched the stitches with the pads of his fingers briefly, barely a caress, frowned, closed his eyes, and turned back around.

“No.  You didn't.”

Again, James was at a loss for words.

It wasn’t long before he felt Q slip into sleep in his arms.  

His own was a long time in coming.

  
  



	5. St. Martin's Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Come with me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many wonderful comments for this story. I thank you for each and every last one of them. This story, however, would not have come about without the inspiration provided by AsheTarasovich's phenomenal artwork. :)
> 
> Please let me know what you think about this new chapter. These two idiots are slowly, very slowly, figuring things out, but why make it easy?

**St. Martin’s Year**  (English Folklore):  a period of fine, calm weather, similar to an Indian summer, occurring in November.  
  


* * *

Things changed.  And yet they didn’t.

James was still a broken, jaded, closed-off, recalcitrant bastard who would never make anyone’s job or life as easy as it could be, but he found himself at least  _ trying _ to be better.  

Though it was difficult at first, he made a point of arguing less with Q on comms and discovered things could go as expected when the intel, and those analysing it, was strong.   The assignments were just as hazardous, just as deadly, but the tethers that bound him back to Q-Branch were not as taut and unyielding as he had feared they would be. They slackened and flexed according to the circumstance and the resources available.

At times, Q could be a dictatorial martinet whose arrogance threatened to overwhelm his brilliance, but once he and Bond stopped bickering like an old married couple, he warmed to the idea of at least  _ listening _ to what 007’s gut -- and the decade’s worth of experience from which that intuition was born -- had to say.   And it wasn’t long before he, R, and the ever-remarkable Ms Moore began to afford the other agents under their care the same input and trust.  

All except 005.  It would be quite some time before he found himself in Q’s good graces again.

Whilst M’s primary concern was always the mission, Q made it quite clear that  _ his _ primary concern was always the agent.  Ensuring that he or she had whatever was necessary -- technological, informational, logistical, or emotional support -- to not only, as James once said, ‘achieve the objective,’ but to also return safely home.

It was an unprecedented approach in the otherwise live and let die mentality of international espionage, yet within the year, the data proved that the scheme was working.  Agents were still injured in the field, sometimes critically. Civilians still died. Sometimes the intel was useless. Occasionally the bad guys got away, but threats were being put down more efficiently and with fewer casualties, and M had received more than one phone call from sister agencies around the world demanding to know what had changed and how they could get in on it.

“I have excellent people working for me,” is all Mallory would ever say.

Whilst the professional relationship between agent and Quartermaster was progressing apace, James and Q’s personal involvement remained largely undefined.   James had not made a permanent move into Q’s bed: each man was quite content with his own space, though they did spend a number of nights each week twined around each other when they were both at home, and not always for sex.  

They each enjoyed a rough, hard fuck, but after a particularly harrowing mission in Uzbekistan, Q showed James how the lightest touch could be just as cathartic and even more healing.  Their morning ritual continued unabated, but beyond that, there were no expectations and, as such, no disappointments. 

“What’s this?”  James picked up the unfamiliar book that sat on the seat of his chair and looked at the cover for a moment before flipping it over to skim the summary.

“New biography on Erwin Rommel.  Came out today. Claims to have new research on the Battle of El Alamein,” Q replied.

Though it was early -- for them -- Q was already dressed for bed, tucked into his sofa corner with a cuppa and an actual book.  The rest of his tech absent. Only his work mobile was close to hand, and  _ it _ sat two metres distant on the far side of the coffee table where he could not easily reach it.  Q was in a rare state of relaxation, and James was pleased to see it. It wasn’t often that Q beat him back to the flat, but R had kicked him out of the Branch earlier in the day after finishing up a 47-hour stint during which he’d run three missions.  James, however, had been called in by Mallory for a secondary briefing for his upcoming assignment to Osaka.

“Took a turn ‘round Daunt’s today.  Saw that. Thought you might find it interesting,”  Q added with a nod and a quick smile before tucking back into his own book on early typography.  “The first chapter was engaging.”

James looked from Q to the book and then back to Q.  He’d always found The Desert Fox fascinating and had read more than one book on Rommel through the years, but whilst he and Q had shared several conversations about military history of all eras, he couldn’t remember ever having specifically mentioned Rommel before.  He must have done though -- in passing? -- for otherwise how would Q have known?

“Thank you.  That’s … quite thoughtful.”  James’ voice sounded confused to his own ears.

“Don’t worry too much about it, Bond.  It’s just a book.” 

James was about to protest that it was quite more than that when his attention was drawn to the wall opposite.  “Is that a new print?”

Q looked up and around before focussing on the large, framed photograph on the wall next to the entryway.  “Oh, yes. Been waiting for that to be ready for weeks now. Glad it’s finally done.”

It was a photograph of The Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, not far from the flat.  Nighttime. Quite late, if the absence of foot and motor traffic was to judge.  The glowing lamps were shrouded in mist so heavy only their general shape was hinted at, but brackish water at the base of the bridge’s pylons glinted in that diffused light, looping and eddying in such a way that James felt as if he was standing at the foot of the bridge itself instead of just looking at an image of it. 

“It’s stunning.”

“Ta.”

James caught the flush that blossomed across Q’s cheeks.  “Wait. Is this yours?” James pointed at the photograph and then at others tucked in on bookshelves and between pieces of Star Wars memorabilia on the mantle that had the feel of the same photographer.   “And these?” 

“Umm … Yes.”

James rested his hand on the mantle next to a photo of The Tower of London at twilight the year they flooded the moat with hundreds of thousands of red, ceramic poppies to commemorate Remembrance Day.  James was surprised. He’d admired these images for months and had never considered that the boffin -- his lover -- might be the artist he’d come to appreciate.

“They’re …”

Q shrugged.  “It’s a hobby.  Keeps me distracted when things start to overload.  Well, overwhelm, really.” He gestured absently at his head.  

He had once confessed to James the drawbacks to his intellect and how he applied it to the job. The most damaging — “Or maybe damning; hard to tell the difference” — was that occasionally he reached a point where his mind, for all it never really rested, simply reached its capacity. 

“Too much,” Q had said, embarrassed by what he clearly considered a weakness.

“Of what?” 

“Everything.”  

Q had not clarified what he meant by that, but the tone of his voice had left Bond decidedly uncomfortable and concerned.  He said as much. To which Q admitted he had become self-destructive — “Once or twice” — and as such kept close tabs on how he managed his focus so as not to lose himself again. 

“How’s it now?  Your head.”

Q closed his book and looked at James.  Struck by the open concern and consideration he saw on the face of a man legendary for his ice-cold resolve, his pat response of ‘I’m fine’ suddenly felt quite disingenuous. 

“I’m … controlling it.”  His right hand clenched rhythmically where it rested on his thigh.  James, of course, noticed it. “This afternoon helped.”

“But not enough.” 

Q shook his head.  “I’ve called in for tomorrow.”

James didn’t let the grimace he felt show on his face.  Q  _ never _ took time off.  “Do you ever not control it?”

“Rather the opposite of what I’m trying to achieve, I’m afraid.”  

“I’m serious, Q.”  

James sat down on the coffee table in front of him.  Even after nine months of living with the man in a far more intimate way than the average flatshare, James couldn’t claim to fully understand the enigmatic Quartermaster, but he honestly couldn’t think of an area of the man’s life -- work, home, hobbies, sex -- in which he didn’t excel, control the situation, or at least ensure he was on equal footing.  He could now even change a tyre in about half the time it took James. 

It had to be exhausting.  “What would happen if you gave up control, even for an hour?”  

“Everything might fall apart.”  The conviction in Q’s tone was telling. 

James had a pretty good idea what Q meant by ‘everything’.  Too much rode on their ability to do their jobs expertly. Too many lives hung in the balance if they didn’t.  James had taught himself not to think too much about it. Not actively at any rate. Q’s mind, however, was always on.  He could only imagine … The pressure could be overwhelming, and whilst James didn’t see Q ever breaking under that pressure, he didn’t much care for the idea of him even cracking because of it.   

“It won’t fall apart,”  James assured. “Would you be willing to try?  Giving up control? With me?”

Q’s bark of laughter was sharp, pained, and scared but it carried with it something else … desperation.  The kind that spoke of the impossibility of regaining something treasured that been lost.

“I … I don’t think I’d even know how to anymore.”

Anymore.

At some point in the past he had, then.  Not completely unfamiliar territory. 

It was a place to start.  Provided ...

“Do you trust me?”  It was a question he rarely asked because he rarely cared about the answer, but he cared about  _ this _ man’s answer.  It would change everything.

“Yes.”  Q nodded, and James’ heart leapt, but it wasn’t quite enough.  He could see that Q was still uncertain. James needed him to be unequivocal in his response.

“No, Q.  Do you  _ trust _ me?”  James held out his hand.  This was it. Trust was a risk.  It meant exposure and if given to the wrong person, it was deadly.  It was the core concern for any Double-O, and James suspected very much for their Quartermaster, too.

Q’s green eyes were just a tad desperate.  It was as if he could see a potential remedy to decades of pain right there in the palm of James’ hand yet was afraid to reach out for it lest it vanish like a will-o-the-wisp before the rising sun.  Q had proven himself to be one of the strongest men James had ever known, however, and something akin to pride welled within James when Q took one steadying breath and reached out across the chasm of his own vulnerabilities.  

He grabbed James’ hand and twined their fingers together.

“I trust you,” Q insisted.

James lifted their hands to his mouth and kissed their joined fingers.

“Then come with me.”

 


	6. Eyewall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q was gone for some minutes: James heard him digging about in the small walk-in wardrobe off the bedroom. When he returned, he pulled behind him a heavy, antique steamer trunk. Shaking his head when James rose to help him, he wrestled it on top of the long ottoman at the end of the bed. He then took something from the top right drawer of his bureau and when he returned again to the bed, Q took James’ hand -- the one he had been holding -- and pressed an equally antique key into his palm.
> 
> “Open it,” he said softly with a nod for the trunk.

**Eyewall:** the area immediately outside the eye of a hurricane or cyclone, associated with tall clouds, heavy rainfall, and high winds.

* * *

 

James was not a novice at this.  Quite experienced in fact. He had a naturally dominant personality and had used it in this fashion both in the field and in his personal life, though not with Q.  Not until now.

It helped to know that Q might have experience with it, too, but even if that was the case, James knew that whatever happened from here would signal a significant transition in their relationship.  

He was oddly at peace with that.  

James led Q to his own room where he sat on the edge of the bed and gestured for Q to kneel.  

At James’ feet.  

Q hesitated.  It was all he could do not to look away from James’ piercing gaze.

“Q, if this is too much ...”

“No.  It’s not,” he insisted and gripped James’ hand more tightly,  “It’s just that … I should show you something first. Wait here.”

Q was gone for some minutes:  James heard him digging about in the small walk-in wardrobe off the bedroom.  When he returned, he pulled behind him a heavy, antique steamer trunk. Shaking his head when James rose to help him, he wrestled it on top of the long ottoman at the end of the bed.  He then took something from the top right drawer of his bureau and when he returned again to the bed, Q took James’ hand -- the one he had been holding -- and pressed an equally antique key into his palm.

“Open it,” he said softly with a nod for the trunk.

Q’s eyes were as serious as James had ever seen them outside work.  His tone was equally so but with a notable undertone that begged for understanding.  James stood but when he slipped the key into the lock and turned it, he did not immediately lift the lid.  He sought out Q who still stood at the side of the bed just out of physical reach. His expression was blank though his eyes retained a ghost of the desperation James had seen earlier.  His slim frame was taut with tension.

He thinks I’m going to reject him.

_Open it, James.  Now!_

He followed Alec’s order.

The trunk was filled with gear:  ropes and restraints, blindfolds and gags, dildos and vibrators, cock rings and nipple clamps, paddles and floggers.

Even a collar.

James fingered the leather of the collar in one hand.  The other he used to beckon to Q.

He was at James’ side in an instant, and James spread his hand wide against the back of Q’s neck.  Firm. Unassailable.

Possessive.

“Explain,” James demanded.

Q did his best to do just that  

Even as a child he’d struggled with managing his mind.  It was a constant fight to keep things from getting to be too much, too loud, inside his head.  Physical activity had helped some. His parents kept him active with sport that made sense for the slight child and teen he had been.  He had loathed tennis. Had desperately wanted to play rugby, but readily acknowledged he’d likely be snapped in half during his first scrum.  Golf was dull, and he’d had no interest in footie.

He’d found some solace in swimming.  The physical exertion along with the repetitive motion and the silence of the water was exactly what he needed to find peace.  It helped him manage, until his final two years of uni.

Whether it was his courses of study, the fact that he was at least five years younger than most of the others in his doctoral studies, breaking up with his boyfriend, or all of the above, something had changed and the swimming had no longer been enough. The tension, the fullness increased and consumed.  The ability to control himself and his mind and how much input he received from everything around him had fled.

He had been untethered and out of control.  

He had an elder brother who suffered in much the same way, and as he idolised his brother had tried his coping mechanisms.

Mind palace?  Too abstract a concept for his linear mind.  He’d not even managed a farmhouse.

Cocaine?  Heroine? Morphine?

He chose cocaine.

It only made things worse.  

 _Much_ worse.

His eldest brother had managed to keep it quiet, the overdose.  It was in none of his medical records. It didn’t even exist in the _hospital’s_ records.  Those who had taken care of him had been paid well.  

And threatened well.

Unlike his elder brother, he’d never been tempted to repeat the experience.  

And he’d never shared this bit of his history with anyone else.  Until now.

It had been his eldest brother’s mysterious assistant who’d given him the name of the club not long after he returned to his studies.    

You suffer as they do, but you’re not your brothers.  Your needs are different. This might be the solution.  

Why?   Why help me?

Because you _are_ different.  You’re not afraid to be kind.  And because I think you’re going to be more important than either of them.

To what?

Everything.

She accompanied him to the club to make the necessary introductions. Gave him the promise that no one -- especially not his brothers -- would ever know.

He believed her.

‘M’lady’ had been everything he needed.  From their initial negotiations and into his first scene, she knew him.  Without ever having met him before, she knew precisely what it took in order for him to first settle his mind and, eventually, find that place where it would go silent altogether.  

He accepted her collar at the end of their first six months, and he started joining her at the club on the weekends and whenever he wasn’t concentrating on his theses.  He felt more himself, more focussed, at her feet than he did in any other aspect of his life except when he was with his code and his tinkering.

After successfully defending his theses in their _viva voce_ and receiving his doctorates, M’lady offered him a permanent contract.  One that would make him hers beyond the collar he wore in those times they were together.  

He wanted it.

And then Olivia Mansfield introduced herself to him.  She had an offer, as well.

He wanted that, too.

The two were incompatible, however.  At least to his thinking. Keeping secrets from M’lady would put him in an untenable position, and whilst he trusted her implicitly, continuing with their relationship, no matter how much he would need/still needed the silence of subspace -- to cede his control to another completely -- it was a security risk he could not take.  M had been clear where his career would ultimately culminate, and the Quartermaster of MI6 could not have such a ripe potential source for blackmail. It would put the entire country at risk.

So he’d taken his grateful leave of M’lady and disappeared into his career with MI6.  He’d find a way to control the uncontrollable.

Somehow.

Looking again the contents of the trunk once Q finished his story, James couldn’t help but feel a bit ill.  Q had literally and metaphorically boxed up an essential aspect of his personality for MI6, and worse, had been denying himself what he needed in order to cope and function easily with the accompanying Six insanity.  Yes, everyone who worked for the SIS made sacrifices, but this ...

“That was 12 _years_ ago,” James said, looking back at Q.

“Yes.”  Q dropped his chin to his chest and leaned against James’ side.  Under the weight of James’ hand on his neck, the tension in Q’s frame had eased as he’d told his story, but now that it was done, it was as though the strength that had sustained him through the tale -- through the _years_ \-- had fled.

James wrapped his arm around Q’s waist to steady him.  “This is M’lady’s collar,” he’d said of the length of aubergine leather he still held in his hand.

Q nodded against the crook of James’ neck.

“Do you want me to use this?”  He gestured at the gear.

Q curled further into James’ body and nodded again.

James had never seen the man so vulnerable.  The Q he knew, or believed he’d known, was brash and arrogant, cheeky and confident, bold and brilliant.  

But he was _this_ , too.

Layers upon layers.

It scared him, this new understanding, but it also gave him a sense of strength -- of power -- James knew he’d only ever use to care for this man the way he always should have been.

  
And _that_ scared him more.

“I need to hear you say it, Q.  A nod’s not enough,” James insisted, reaching for the peace he had felt earlier, pushing his own fear aside for the man in his arms.

Q pulled back to see James’ face.  “I’m … I’m afraid, truthfully.” Thank God!  He wasn’t the only one, and James could see how much that admission cost Q and admired his strength all the more.

“Of what?”

“Of what happens to me if it doesn’t work anymore.  Of what happens to me if it does. It’s been so _long_ , James.”  Q’s sigh was pained and desperate.  “And I know this isn’t what you expected when you-”

“Stop there,” James demanded and Q did.  His response was so instant and instinctive that again James couldn’t help a moment’s awe at the difference between this Q and the Quartermaster.  But it was only a moment. “Did I expect it? No. But if you’re offering what I think you are, Q, it’s a gift, priceless, but …” and it was his turn to hesitate.  “Q, I’m not M’lady.”

“And I don’t need you to be.  M’lady and I wouldn’t work anymore.  I almost went back to her. In the days right after Skyfall.  Losing so much in the explosion was hard enough but then everything with Silva and losing M … my _head_ ... it would’ve been so easy.  I was actually in the queue at the club when I realised it wouldn’t have worked.  May have even been more harmful, actually because I’m not the man I was then. My needs are different now.”

“So what did you do?”

It was then that Q smiled.  The first genuine smile James had seen from him in days.  “I didn’t have to do anything.”

“What happened, then?”

“You said yes to dinner.”

Oh.

Q pulled the key from the lock and pressed it into James’ hand again.  “The key … it’s yours. If you want it. The contents of the trunk are yours.  If you want them.” Then Q eased himself to the floor, kneeling at James’ feet, head bent, eyes focused on the rug between them.  

His voice, when it eventually came, was barely a whisper, but there was a thread of steel within it.  “I am yours. If you want me.”

As if there was any doubt about that.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a rough writing week. The words simply will not come anymore. No idea why.
> 
> Thankfully, I have a bit of a backlog of chapters for this, and hopefully, the words will return before those are all posted.
> 
> Feedback is a godsend. The comments are sustaining. :)


	7. The Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Now let’s begin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my betas for this chapter, Springbok7 and Boffin1710. Couldn't do it without you, my friends.

**The Eye** :  a region of mostly calm weather at the centre of strong tropical cyclones.  It is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of towering thunderstorms where the most severe weather and highest winds occur.

* * *

 

Their negotiations were brief and focussed only on what Q needed _tonight_.  There would be time to discuss the rest later.

Safeword established.

“I’ll be back in ten minutes.  Choose two items from the trunk you would like me to use.  One should be a whip or flogger. I will choose two more.” He smiled at the hitch in Q’s breathing.  “Get your kit off. Clothes folded and on the bureau. Face down in the centre of the bed, hands wrapped around the slats in the headboard.”  

When James returned, a suede leather flogger with metal rings attached to the end of each fall perfect for pain play and a remote-controlled vibrating prostate massager -- freshly cleansed and batteries replaced -- to provide intense sensation had been positioned neatly on the table next to the bed along with a bottle of slick and a strip of condoms.

A pair of spectacles sat next to the lot.

Face down in the centre of the bed as decreed, lay Q.  

His hands were where they ought to be, his legs parted just enough that James could see the swell of his hairless bollocks between them.   His head was turned toward the door, green eyes peeking over his arm -- dark in anticipation of what was to come -- though James knew whilst Q followed his movements, he couldn’t see anything in detail.  Not from this distance.

“You’ve done well, pet,” James said, surveying the room and the preparations.  He sat a bottle of warmed oil on the table next to Q’s glasses. Though he wore no shirt, James had changed into a pair of black jeans and black leather work boots.  He’d probably regret the zip on the jeans and the laces of the boots later, but tonight was not a night for sleep trousers or track pants.

Q looked over his shoulder as James approached the bed. He opened his mouth to speak, but James shook his head.

“No words, but no gag.”  James ran his hand down the length of Q’s back from nape to tailbone, chasing the goosebumps the light touch pulled from Q.  “You’ll show me how strong you are, won’t you,” he husked in Q’s ear. Q bit his bottom lip to keep from moaning aloud when James’ roaming fingers brushed against his arsehole.

“Good boy.  Now let’s begin.”

It started simply with a massage that would have had Boy groaning constantly had he not been forbidden from doing so.  Sir was masterful in working kink after kink out of his pet’s tense shoulders and back, legs and feet, and his _hands_ … by the time Sir had finished with Boy’s hands -- so overworked he hadn’t known how much they hurt until Sir took the hurt away -- the sheet beneath his head was damp with his first tears of release.

But he had made not a sound.

“Such a good boy,” Sir whispered when he’d finished.  He wiped the tears from his pet’s face with his thumb.  “I’m very proud you. You’ve been brilliant.” Boy’s head felt light and hazy but he heard Sir’s words and contentment at having pleased Sir melted into his limbs.  His eyes closed when Sir pressed a kiss into his curls. Sir rose from the bed. Boy heard some rustling, and then a few moments later, his right arm was being extended across the mattress, wrist secured in a leather cuff attached to a restraint tied to the headboard.  Sir repeated the process on his left before shackling Boy’s ankles in the same way to the bottom corners of the bed.

Boy then felt the soft, suede strands of the flogger slither across his shoulders, down his back, and over the swell of his arse, the small D-rings attached to the end of each fall cool against his heated flesh.

He nearly gasped in response, his restrained hitch in breathing eliciting a chuckle from his lord.

“I’ll want your voice now, boy,” Sir said, dragging the flogger across his skin again, this time letting the rings dip into the valley of his arse.

Boy sighed heavily in response.  The first sound he’d made in over an hour.

“It’s a start, pet,” Sir said, “but maybe this will help you along.”  A cascading jingle and the low whistle of soft leather being driven through the air reached Boy’s ear a split second before the bite of two dozen metal rings stung his flesh.

Boy’s first cry was one of surprise rather than pain.

The draw of the leather against his flesh as Sir drew back to swing again pulled a low groan from deep within him that crescendoed with the second lash.  A heavy impact tool meant for experienced players, the flogger had a substantial bite that set Boy to squirming on the bed. It said much of Boy’s trust in Sir and in Sir’s skill that he’d set it out for use their first time together.  In the wrong hands, the instrument could easily wound, draw blood even, which was not the goal.

Sir did not intend to abuse that trust.

On the third swing, Boy’s groan turned to a yelp when the rings bit into the tender skin below his arse.

“Color?” demanded Sir.

Boy sucked in two rapid breaths against the sting before he could answer with a firm, decisive, but soft, “Green, Sir.”

Sir saw the truth of that response in Boy’s eyes.  He nodded and struck again with two swings, one immediately after the other.

Instead of curving in to escape the pain, Boy reared up in response, seeking out more, his body pulling tight against the restraints.  “Again, please, Sir!”

Sir complied with three more quick, but not forceful, blows.  

Whilst Boy caught his breath, Sir set the flogger aside and ran his hands gently over the abused flesh of his pet’s back which was red with puffy welts where the rings had landed.  “Enough for now,” he said, curling his hand in Boy’s hair who pressed up against it, seeking contact with his lord.

As hazy as Boy’s mind was before, it was twice that now -- syrupy and slow, like treacle -- and all he felt was the press of fingertips against his scalp, the burn of his back, and the vibration of the deep, soothing baritone of Sir’s voice in his ear, praising him.  How good he was. How pleased Sir was with his new pet.

The steel clips connecting the cuffs to their tethers were undone, and Sir rolled Boy carefully onto his back.  Though the sheet was of the smoothest, finest cotton, it scratched roughly at the welts on Boy’s back. He moaned long and lustfully at the pleasantly painful sensation and nestled in, rubbing his back and arse into the fabric like a bear against the rough trunk of a pine tree.

“The most gorgeous pain slut I’ve ever seen,” Sir chuckled as he clipped Boy’s wrists to their restraints again.  He buckled a pair of thigh cuffs into place and secured Boy’s ankles to them, exposing his pet completely.

“Open your eyes, Boy.”  Sir showed him the prostate massager and the slick and smiled predatorily at the way his pet’s already full, flushed cock twitched, smearing a bead of precum on the pale flesh of his belly.  “Watch me as I do this. I want to hear you. If you come before I grant you permission, I will be extremely disappointed. Do you understand, pet?”

“Yes.  I understand, sir,” Boy murmured.  The distressing thought of displeasing Sir nearly pulled him from his haze, but his lord’s next words soothed him.

“You’re quite strong.  I know you’ll only please me tonight.”

Boy did as he was commanded and kept his eyes trained on Sir as he slowly worked him open, expressing his gratitude with moans that filled the air between them.  His hips bucked when the first vibration of the thin, curved length of silicone pulsed through him.

His sharp cry was for how he nearly spilt himself at this first test, but though Sir had chosen a setting that lay random, low-level pulses directly on his prostate, Boy quickly found his touchstone when Sir’s hand grasped his.  

Prepared, now.  Grounded, he let the sensation of the next throb flow through him.

“Good.  Very good.”

Boy’s eyes followed Sir as he got off the bed to untie his boots and strip out of his jeans.  Muscled and scarred with just a hint of that tum no middle-aged man could ever truly escape no matter how fit he was, his lord was stunning, but it was the sight of his large, flushed, erect cock that set Boy’s mouth to watering.  

His tongue licked at his bottom lip in anticipation of it filling his mouth.

“You want this, don’t you, pet?” Sir said.  

“Yes, Sir,” Boy moaned.

Hefting his penis in his hand, Sir stroked it until a bead of precum formed at the head.  Capturing it on the tip of his index finger, Sir offered it to his pet who had the wherewithal to ask permission before sucking the digit into his mouth to lick it clean.

Boy was stunned when Sir explained that he would get no more tonight.

“It calms you, doesn’t it?  Sucking me off in the mornings.”  Sir upped the speed of the vibrator by a degree and twisted one of Boy’s nipples as the shudder went through him.  “Settles your mind. That’s why you’re not concerned about reciprocation. You’re already getting what you need.”

“Yes, Sir.”  Boy’s whispered answer was accompanied by a deep flush of embarrassment at having been caught out.

“Greedy boy!” Sir growled.  “You’ve denied me _my_ full pleasure with such selfishness.  No more. I will know the taste of your cock.”

Sir had crawled back onto the bed as he spoke.  Pushing Boy’s legs further apart, he settled himself between those spread thighs.  Looking up the length of his pet’s body, he reminded him of the expectation. “You will not come.  I will hear your voice.”

“Yes, Si-” Boy’s acknowledgement of the order slid into a moan when his lord swallowed him whole.

Between the random pulses, buzzes, beats, and throbs of the vibrator and the suction and teasing of Sir’s talented mouth and tongue, Boy was soon writhing on the bed.  He pulled at the restraints that bound his hands, so desperate he was to touch, to tangle his fingers in Sir’s soft, greying hair. Boy was nearly lost when Sir slid his hands beneath him and drew short, sharp nails down the length of Boy’s back, scraping at the welts that had formed in the trailing falls of the flogger.  

Finally, _finally_ in that blend of pain and pleasure, bite and suction, sharp and wet Boy’s mind fell quiet.  

He soared on the sensations Sir pulled from him and found peace.

He barely felt Sir pull the vibrator from him to slide home himself, but the hard, rapid thrusting merely sent him spiralling higher toward something he had denied himself too long.  Boy reached for it and suddenly his hands were free. He was in Sir’s arms, bound thighs spread wide across powerful hips as Sir fucked up into him.

“Now!” his lord growled in his ear.

Boy found his release in a half-choked scream and a seemingly endless shudder that shot streams of come between them smearing across their bellies as Sir continued to thrust in search of his own relief.

It came a moment later with a growl and a curse and a bite into the flesh of his pet’s neck that would linger for nearly a month.

He didn’t know how long he hovered in subspace, but when Boy started to retreat and Q began to emerge, he was clean and unfettered and warm, held closely in James’ arms.

His back stung pleasantly, and even though the bite at the curve of his neck where it met his shoulder was painful, the unplanned injury was welcome.  It would serve as a reminder of this night, creating for Q a lingering palliative he could use to keep his mind quiet a tad longer.

“You won’t need to make it last 12 years,” James said in his ear as if sensing the train his thoughts had taken. “Or even 12 days, for that matter.”  He pulled Q closer and kissed his forehead tenderly. “Whatever you need from me. However and whenever you need it, I will provide.”

They splashed onto James’ chest, Q’s tears.   Of gratitude, yes, but they had their true root in something more.  Something he feared to put a name to but knew he desperately wanted.

“No words. Time to talk tomorrow.  For now, sleep.” Sir’s tone tinged James’ voice.  Already seeing right through him.

_Yes, M’lord_.

Though the thoughts were Boy’s, it was Q who obeyed.

_This_ time.

He’d be ever grateful to M’lady and the training and care she’d given him, but it was clear now to Q it had all been in preparation for _this_.   He closed his eyes to a quiet mind in M’lord’s arms and the surety that the world and relationship he and James woke to tomorrow would be completely different than that of today.

For the first time in years, Q slept in peace.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments have been sustaining, and I think I am finally in the headspace where I am no longer afraid of my words, so writing on future chapters will commence. I still have a few in reserve, so you hopefully won't even notice. :)
> 
> Please continue to let me know what you think.


	8. Gosling Blast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A second slam of the Quartermaster’s fist against the desktop left Bond with absolutely no doubt that if he didn’t do something to repair the situation and quickly, Q might very well scuttle his career -- and more -- before Mallory could get to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a busy ten days. Though I hate to admit it, work does intrude at times. Papers must be marked.
> 
> I hope that you find this chapter worthy of the delay. Please let me know what you think.

**Gosling blast** (also called gosling storm):   A sudden squall of rain or sleet in England.  
  


* * *

 

  


The new dynamic of Boy and Sir and the increasing attachment between Q and James did not mean the working relationship betwixt the Quartermaster and the Double-O was any less explosive at times.

“You absolute shite!”

The door to Q’s office slammed open. Echoing through the branch, it hit the wall behind with such force that the handle left a dent in the plaster.

Sat at his desk, Q neither jumped at the sound nor looked up from his laptop.  “Do come in, 007. Let not the fact the ‘Do Not Disturb’ light is illuminated be in any way a deterrent to you.  Shut it behind you, though, please. The door. I’d rather the children not hear mummy and daddy argue again.” He nodded out the window of his office to the Q-Branch bullpen beyond the now opaque glass.  

Bond shut the door.  Q’s tea rippled in its mug.

“You cut me off!”  Bond snarled, looming over Q, hands planted on the polished wood of his desk.

“From what, exactly?”  Q shut his laptop and steepled his hands lightly on top of the lip.   His voice calm. His gaze pointed.

“The funds I needed to complete the mission.”

“Oh.  That.”  

“Yes!   _That_ !”  Bond had found his MI6-issued, _limitless_ Palladium Card had quite inexplicably reached its limit.  “Damn it, Q, you compromised the operation.”

“And which operation would that be?” Q asked with a simultaneous cock of his head and eyebrow.  “Oh, yes. The one where you needlessly blew up yet _another_ consulate. An act that would have been wholly unnecessary had you followed your mission handler’s instructions -- _my_ instructions -- and bloody well turned _right_ at the junction instead of forging straight ahead into three dozen armed members of their militia.”

“I had it under control.”

“You had nothing under control, 007!” Q surged to his feet.  His fist slammed down on the desktop between Bond’s hands, but his voice, though cold as the winter wind, never rose above a conversational pitch and was all the more threatening for it.  

He leaned toward Bond, weight braced on his fist, eyes hard.

“From the moment you ignored my advice, ditched your earwig, and went silent altogether, you had nothing under control.  Else why is there a gigantic hole in the ground where the Ldarian consulate used to be? M is on the warpath, and it took some fast talking on my part for him not to suspend your arse from field duty _permanently_.  Though why I ought to continue to stick out my neck and risk my career for you is beyond me.”

Q threw up his hands.  “It’s been months since … I thought we were _past_ this.  I’ve opened myself up to listen to your instincts because you _do_ excel in the field -- and we’ve had some success with that; in working _together_ \-- but you don’t always have sight of the broader picture which sometimes makes your instinct wrong.   I thought you trusted me. Trusted in my ability to see you through assignments, but this is the third time in as many missions you’ve gone off comms.  I warned you … I _warned_ you if it happened again without a bloody good reason, I would be forced to do something drastic.”

Bond was silent as he watched two little pink spots bloom on Q’s cheeks.

Christ.  The Quartermaster was beyond furious.

This.   _This_ is what Jack had warned him about.

“So I ask, 007, what was your bloody good reason?”  With his face flushed with indignation, breathing rapid and shallow with the same, Q was magnetic in his rage and would have stolen James’ breath, if he wasn’t just a tad bit terrifying.

So utterly different from the way he was at home sometimes, bound flesh lifting and writhing beneath Sir’s controlling hand.

James straightened and stepped away from the desk.  Not a retreat -- _never_! -- but enough to put some distance between them.  He needed space to think. They were too close. There was too much energy between them.  He drew breath to answer, but Q did not leave him any opening.

“Cutting off your funds did nothing to compromise the mission.  The mission was finished the moment the consulate blew. All it did was force you to use your own money and resources to get home so you could come here, into _my_ office, and shout abuse at _me_ for a situation _you_ created.”

A second slam of the Quartermaster’s fist against the desktop left Bond with absolutely no doubt that if he didn’t do something to repair the situation and quickly, Q might very well scuttle his career -- and more -- before Mallory could get to him.

For it was then James realised there _hadn’t_ been a good reason.  It hadn’t even been his instinct that drove him.  Only impatience and sheer bloody-mindedness. He’d wanted to just get the job _done_.  To finally put the weeks in South Africa behind him and get back to London to … to Q.

Oh, bugger.

The anger he’d been nursing since leaving Cape Town in economy class 29 hours ago drained out of him in a rush.

“Q, I’m sorry!”  The apology he hadn’t been able to even force out after Cairo now came unbidden, and fuck if he didn’t mean it.  

_Well, that’s a first._

Not now, Alec!

“I didn’t want to wait on the intel; thought I knew the score,” James continued. “Thought I knew how to get the job done quickly.  Full steam ahead. I got the job done, but … yes. I fucked up.”

The effect wasn’t immediate.  Q still radiated tension and righteous indignation but as James’ admission and apology sunk in, the tight line of his jaw softened a little, and he straightened to his full height from his hunch over the desk, putting him again on a level with James.  

“Thank you for realising that, Bond.”  Q’s eyes still blazed and his tone was still painfully cool, but he no longer seemed ready to have James drawn and quartered and his dismembered body sent to the four corners of England.  “I’ve done what I can, but there will be repercussions not even I can keep you from in this instance.”

“I understand.”  And James did.

Q eyed him critically.  “Perhaps you do,” he said after a long moment.

James swallowed.  He couldn’t shake the pinprick of apprehension that all of this -- his foolishness and arrogance -- would crack the foundation of … What?  What was this between them? It was something. He couldn’t define it, but he knew he valued it.

It mattered.   _Q_ mattered.

_Never thought I’d see the day…_

Enough, Alec.

“Are _we_ okay?” It was the hardest question James had ever asked -- even more so than the apology had been to give -- and yet it spilt effortlessly from his lips because he needed to know the answer.  

Desperately.

Q’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, what?”  He sounded caught between anger and genuine confusion at the unexpected shift in topic.  He wrapped his arms around his chest and took a step back from the desk. It was a defencive stance and one that spurred James to force out the words that mattered.

James gestured between them.  “Us. My fuck up. I don’t … I’d hate it if … Christ!”  

He turned away, stalked a few paces, and spun back again.  “I don’t want my stupidity to ruin things between us! You mean too much!” James finished in a shouted, strained rush.  

_Well, that was awkward.  Suave secret agent?_

Shut _up_ , Alec!

Q blinked.  Repeatedly.

“Us?”  The word little more than an exhalation of sound, Q was stunned by James’ rapid-fire admission.  

But it was the small, bewildered smile on his face that gave James hope.

“You said … _‘us’_.”  His ire completely gone, Q seemed almost shy.  He rubbed at the side of his face as if trying to hide from James’ gaze

“I did.”  James rounded the desk.  

“Us … us …”  The boffin seemed to be caught in a feedback loop, his eyes focused at some distant point over Bond’s left shoulder.  “ _Us_ …”

“Q?”  James ran his hand down the sleeve of Q’s cardi from shoulder to wrist, finally twining the man’s long, capable fingers in his own.

Q turned his eyes to James, smiled, and shook his head.

“Gabriel.”  

The missing piece.  Through everything, even Sir and Boy, Q had withheld this one last part of himself.  

“Leonardo _Gabriel_ Matisse Holmes.”

His name.  

His promise.  

It was what James hadn’t realised he needed to know _until_ he knew.

It was everything.

Pulling him close, James kissed Gabriel.

Slow and tender and patient, this kiss was the ‘hello’ they had been dancing around for nearly a year:   the greeting that began that day at the National Gallery. Q sat down hard on the top of his desk, wrapping his arms around James’ hips when James cupped his face to deepen the connection.  

It was in that kiss they finally knew each other.

James pressed his temple to Q’s when they finally drew apart, breaths heavy between them.  

“Gabr-”

“Not here,” Q whispered.  He slid his arms up James’ back beneath his jacket.  From the beginning, Q had insisted on keeping the physical aspects of their relationship out of the office.  It was only later, when Sir and Boy came into being, that Q admitted he needed to separate the two. Compartmentalisation helped keep his mind somewhat organised.  Kept things in his head from getting to be ‘too much’ too quickly.

It bought him time.  

That he granted them even _this_ much was a gift James did not intend to question.   “We’ll talk later,” Q promised. “At home.”

Home.  James smiled into the riot of Gabriel’s hair and pressed a kiss there.

“You have an appointment in five minutes, anyway,” Q murmured into James’ cotton-clad chest.

James stood straight, looking down Q.  “I’ve no reason to go to Medical-”

“As if you would even _with_ cause,” Q -- all Quartermaster again -- scoffed.  “No, it’s with Accounting, actually. You have a pocket full of receipts,” he stood in the circle of James’ arms and pat the front of his jacket which rustled slightly under the pressure before stepping away, “and if you want to be reimbursed, you need to submit them today.   Budget constraints and end of quarter deadlines, you understand.”

“With whom?”

Q couldn’t help but smile at the look of trepidation he saw on James’ face.  

“Aoife.”

“Q!  No.” James’ stomach filled with dread.  “Not Aoife, please! You _know_ what she’s like … what she’s done.  Elias hasn’t been the same since he met with her after the Sydney mission.”

“Well, it’s hardly her fault 002 tried to submit a flamingo as a legitimate business expense without any kind of receipt,” Q countered drily.  

Aoife Callahan was MI6’s senior accountant, and though she rarely worked with reimbursement paperwork anymore, she was always happy to help out in a pinch, especially where vexing Double-Os were concerned.  

They had a _long_ history together.  

Aoife was 67 years old, had worked for Six since finishing Uni, and was a stickler for the rules.  No receipts, no reimbursements. If one’s receipts were not itemised, the agent would have to provide a detailed accounting, in person, regarding the item’s cost and its specific purpose in regard to mission success, as well as other criteria long since established by Mrs Callahan.  Such interviews -- “Sodding interrogation is what it is,” 003 once insisted -- were often lengthy and blunt. Aoife played no favourites because she _had_ no favourites.  If you wanted your money back, you submitted itemised receipts,  or she’d know why not.

“And you _know_ what happened to Alec,” James was practically pleading now.

Q did know.  He had the security footage stashed in a secure file entitled:  ‘Greatest Hits.’ It wasn’t that Alec’s expenditure hadn’t been legitimate, or that 006 didn’t have a receipt, but _that_ receipt was the only one _not_ itemised, and so to Aoife Alec had gone.

It had probably worked against Alec that he had chosen a speciality brand.  Just created more questions.

“‘Kimono Micro-Thin’ condoms.  Micro-thin? For his pleasure or for yours?”

“Mine, ma’am,”  Alec had replied, feet flat on the floor, hands on knees, back straight in his chair like a schoolboy before the headmaster.

No one but Q was anything but unfailingly polite to Aoife, and he only because she had taken a shine to him when he was but a wet-behind-the-ears techie.  He reminded her of her son. Too big a brain with just the right amount of cheek and charm, she’d said.

“... _extra_ large,”  Aoife finally looked up from the spreadsheet she was compiling on her laptop and assessed Alec who sat across from her.  “Agent Trevelyan,” she had said, pulling her reading spectacles from her face so she could see him more clearly, “you are aware that to avoid slippage, the condom girth should always be smaller than the penis girth.”

Though the CCTV feed was black and white, Alec’s flush had still been noticeable.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Aoife had looked Alec up and down, including what seemed to be a brief, clinical assessment of the man’s groin, before sighing and shaking her head.  “If that’s the case, I’m afraid I’ll need more details for the report to account for the size disparity.”

Things went rather downhill after that.  

A forty-minute interroga- _interview_ for a £9.99 box of rubbers.  Hardly cost effective in the long-run for either Alec or Six, but it was priceless in all other regards.

James’ personal expenses, in this case, were significantly higher.

“Then I suggest you keep Alec’s situation in mind and get to Accounting.  You know how Aoife is when people are late. I told you there were some repercussions I couldn’t keep you from.  This is one of those. Unless, of course, you’re willing to eat the cost …”

“I’m out £4,321.58!”

“Four thousand, three hundred, and twenty-one pounds?!”  That _was_ significant.

“And fifty-eight pence!”

Q looked at the clock on the wall above the door and then at James.  “Two minutes, Bond. Go on. Off you pop!”

“Christ!”

“I’ll let you take the sting of it out on me later!” Q promised as James -- his agent, his lover, his lord -- turned on his heel and stormed out of his office, somewhat more quietly than he had stormed in.

Q smiled into his tea.

It was turning out to be a surprisingly good afternoon, after all.

 


	9. Microburst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the silence of the water, he heard only the beating of his own heart and the rush of blood in ears and through his veins. If he pushed hard enough, maybe the rest of the noise in his head would stop.

**Microburst-** A strong localized downdraft from a thunderstorm with peak gusts lasting 2 to 5 minutes. 

* * *

  
  


Q tagged the edge with one hand, rotated his torso in a deliberate twist to use the momentum he had generated to punch off the wall with his feet.  He pulled away from the side with several strong breaststrokes in the opposite direction. When he was fully in the lane again, he switched to a smooth freestyle stroke to pull himself through the water.

Far too early to attract even those on the strictest fitness regimen, the MI6 pool was deserted, but even when he shared the lanes with others, Q heard nothing in the water.  Its muffling effects kept the external at bay. There was nought but what was in his own head. 

And today, this week … 

Too loud.

It was a risk, this.  He really hadn’t the time, not with four Double-Os in the field, two set to go out later in the day, and another scheduled to return tomorrow.  He’d not been home in three days. Just as well he’d never got round to getting the pair of moggies he’d been eyeing on the shelter’s website.

He had assistants and shift leads and R -- a whole cadre of brilliantly qualified people -- all perfectly capable, and he trusted them.  He truly did. But there were some things that couldn’t be delegated. Some things that couldn’t be assigned to someone else. Some things that --

Too much.

Q tagged the concrete again, spun, and punched.  

In the silence of the water, he heard only the beating of his own heart and the rush of blood in ears and through his veins.  If he pushed hard enough, maybe the rest of the noise in his head would stop. 

For a tad.

Even an hour ...

Da dum    Da dum Da dum    Da dum Da dum

Peace.

Peace.

Find the peace …

Da dum    Da dum Da dum     Da dum Da dum

Peac-

He hadn’t the time.

Corrections to the budget to Mallory by week’s end …

Tag the wall. Spin around. Punch off.

He switched to a butterfly stroke.  

Up his heart rate.  Drown out the noise.

DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum

Peace.

Pea-

Four time-sensitive projects in his lab in R&D.

Retirement tea for Dougherty in Purchasing.

Thousands at risk if 002’s mission goes pear-shaped.  The bioweapon too unstable to move.

Tag. Spin. Punch.  

Sherlock showing up at the flat to ‘chat.’

DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum

Carlson in Tbilisi … five hours ... everything ready? 

Check with R.  

DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum

James out 33 days.

DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum

DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum DaDum

Deep cover.

High stakes.

No contact.

Mind … still … too much!

Tag. Spin. Punch.

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

Muscles burning. 

Radio silence.

Back tomorrow.

Hopefully.  Hard to know.

Three inter-agency schemes that …

James …

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

Needed …

_ Sir _ ...

True Peace …

Shoulders screaming!

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

**Tag!**

Budget.

**Spin!**

Agents.  

**Punch!**

James!

Sir ...

Inter-agency.  Time-sensitive

**_Q._ **

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

Bioweapon. James. 

_ Sir! _

Tbilisi.

**_Q?_ **

Peace!

_ James! _

_ SIR!!!!! _

**_Q!!!_ **

DaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDumDaDum

Q breached the surface of the water with a single sob and grasped blindly at the edge of the pool, gripping the slick surface in his trembling hands, sucking in deep gulps of air like a landed fish, desperate to push back the noise that threatened to overwhelm him.

Too much!

Too _loud_!

Christ!

Two sets of hands wrapped around his shuddering upper arms and dragged him from the water.  

The  _ fuck _ ?!

Q kicked out at his assailants, rolling across the cool, damp concrete deck of the pool. Scrambling to his feet, he tore off the swim goggles and grabbed the first thing to hand.  Fringe dripping water in his eyes, Q swung out with one of the foam paddle boards stacked in the corner near the spectator bench. A shite weapon, but it was all he had.

If he could get to the locker room-

“Q, for fuck’s sake stop swinging that damn thing --  _ Ow _ !  Bugger! -- it’s  _ me _ !”

Q pulled up mid-swing but the momentum of the intended blow unbalanced him, and he fell on his bum, spared a broken tailbone by the sheer luck of landing in a pile of lane buoys.  

“James?” he pushed back his wet curls and peered up myopically at the blurred figure of his agent and lover.  “You’re back. Early. Why are you home early?”

“Good to see you, too,” James said dryly.  He reached down to pull Q to his feet just as R tossed a towel over the boffin’s head.

“Moneypenny rang, boss.  Emergency. You’re needed,” she said, scrubbing his curls dry.

“I’m not a toddler, thank you very much!” He snagged the towel from her, wrapped it around his waist with an indignant huff and a rub for his sore arse, shooting James a glare for his chuckle.  “Sitrep,” he demanded of his second, making for the locker room.

“Not anything with our Double-Os already in the field.  At least nothing they’ve reported in,” R said, both she and a slightly sodden Bond hurrying to keep pace with the Quartermaster  “So a senior agent or it’s something new. Himself needs you up top in his office five minutes ago. Bond, too.”

Q stuttered to a halt.  “What do you mean, Bond, too?” He looked from R to James and back again.  “The man is  _ literally _ just back from Seattle.  A day early! How could M expect him to go out again when he doesn’t even know he’s back--”  His eyes widened with sudden realisation. “You lied! To your  _ Quartermaster _ !”  

Recognising that particular look of pique on her boss’ face when he spun around to face Bond as well as the all-too-familiar ‘Pointy Finger of Vexation’, R ducked into the locker room.  This would take time they didn’t have.

When she returned less than two minutes later, fresh clothes in hand, the two had barely started into their argument about the relative merits of surprising one’s partner who was also -- technically -- one’s superior by finishing up and returning home a day early but keeping it secret from all but the head of the Service.  She lay her bundle on the closest bench and stole the towel from around Q’s waist to set about drying him again. 

Though Q didn’t stop his polemic -- “No, Bond!  That is  _ not _ how this works.  The job is the job.  You know that! We’ve discussed this.” -- he helpfully lifted first one arm and then the other when she towelled up and did the same with each foot when she towelled down.  She returned the thick cloth to him, and then politely turned her eyes when she yanked down his swim trunks -- though she’d seen him in his altogether more than once -- and tossed Bond a pair of clean pants over her shoulder.  

Q never broke stride in his reprimand -- Bond was now simply listening with a patient, knowing smile on his face for sometimes it was just easier to give a horse its head -- and once fully dry, stepped into the proffered pants before accepting the navy blue track pants, t-shirt, and SIS-crested warm-up jacket from R without fully realising  _ what _ he was dressing himself in.  Socks would have to wait, but Q again lifted each foot when prodded to slide into a pair of trainers as he ended his admonition of Bond’s actions.

“Though … I appreciate the sentiment, James,” Q’s tone shifted to one that was both weary and surprisingly affectionate given his rant, “but when the job is at hand, the  _ rules _ must be followed.  Things fall apart otherwise.”

James’ eyes sharpened on Q’s exhausted face.  

Fall apart.

Q’s greatest worry.  

Christ.  It was then James understood the real root of Q’s reaction.

_ A bit thick sometimes, aren’t you? _

Shut up, Alec.

“You’re right, of course.  I’ll be better at communicating my intentions in the future,” 007 said, formally.  Agent to Quartermaster. Then risking something more, James reached out to cup Gabriel’s face in his hand, fingertips curling into the damp curls before pressing pointedly into the back of his head.  “Too much?” The words heavy with understanding. 

“Almost.  I’m better now.” 

The shock of being unceremoniously hauled out of the water had, oddly enough, snapped him back into the right headspace, but it was James’ touch that was likely to keep him there, at least until more precise measures could be employed later.  

Though he shouldn’t, Q couldn’t keep himself from nuzzling into the palm of James’ hand.  “I’m glad you’re home.”

James smiled and leaned in to kiss him.

“Alright, you two. Whilst I’d love to continue watching the eye sex -- and well,  _ real _ sex, too, if I’m being completely honest -- you’ve already left me with enough to scrub from the servers,” pecked R, finally handing Q his spectacles.   She’d known about the two of them for months. She was the only one who did.

Q elbowed her for her cheek.

“Besides, Mallory awaits,” she reminded them. 

With a joint look that said ‘more later’, he and James followed R from the pool and gymnasium. They parted ways at the door:  R for her station and 004’s check-in and the men for the lifts that would take them to Mallory.

R was halfway to Q-Branch when the Quartermaster’s indignant shout echoed down the stone-pillared corridor.

“What in the bloody  _ fuck _ am I wearing?!”

  
  



	10. Downdraft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It began with an early morning emergency briefing between the Chief of the SIS, his best Double-O fresh off a mission to Seattle, and a slightly damp, sockless boffin in a tracksuit and trainers. 
> 
> It ended as an inferno in a block of flats on the Villa Pierre Ginier in the 18th Arrondissement.

**Downdraft** \- A column of cool air that sinks toward the ground. It is most often accompanied by rain.

 

* * *

 

Euphemisms weren’t used to describe the Paris mission.

It wasn’t a cock up.  It didn’t go pear-shaped.  The shite didn’t hit the fan.  And it didn’t go to Hell in a handbasket.

No, Paris was called it what it was.

Utterly devastating.

It began with an early morning emergency briefing between the Chief of the SIS, his best Double-O agent fresh off a mission to Seattle, and a slightly damp, sockless boffin in a tracksuit and trainers.  

It ended as an inferno in a block of flats on the  _ Villa Pierre Ginier _ in the 18th  _ Arrondissement _ .

The enquiry started two days later.

Unlike the probe that took place after the bombing of Vauxhall Cross, the investigation into Mission: AX415007Q (Codename: Minotaur) wasn’t an inquisition broadcast on the telly for the entire nation to gawk over.  It was an intensely private affair with only the enquiry board, their assistants, those summoned to give testimony, their counsel -- if requested -- and two others in attendance. 

With Lady Elizabeth Smallwood leading the proceedings in place of the now retired-from-public-life Claire Dowar, Mallory was the first to testify, answering questions and providing commentary in the same chamber where Olivia Mansfield had sat just one year prior.  

M spoke at length about Minotaur: how the intel came to Six, why he assigned the personnel he did, and the events in the field in Paris, responding in great detail to follow up questions from Smallwood, the Foreign Secretary, the new chairwoman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and his counterparts from MI5 and GCHQ.  Then came Tanner, who did the same.

The next day saw R, SIO Esme Balan  from Station P,  and Lena Moore and Everett Crispe from Q-Branch give their testimony.  Each contributed to the overall picture, scope and specifications of the mission, holding up well under the pointed questioning.  

M watched from the gallery with Moneypenny at his side, occasionally glancing at the only other spectators in the room: two tall, lanky men -- one ginger-headed, the other with dark curls -- who sat side by side in the front row observing everything in the room.  M knew them, of course. And why they were there. 

He and Moneypenny debriefed with Tanner over dinner at Rules that night, and all agreed it was impossible to determine the thinking of the committee.  There remained, however, one last person to testify. The only one who could say with any degree of certainty what had happened on the ground in Paris.

But would he show?

“The committee calls on Operations Officer, Commander James Bond to give testimony,” Lady Smallwood said when the proceedings began on the third morning.

Moneypenny’s quiet inhalation was one of anticipation.  Bond had been summoned before previous enquiry boards, of course, and had always managed to be inconveniently ‘out of the country.’

But when the doors at the back of the chamber opened, James Bond strode through them.  He was dressed impeccably in a dark charcoal windowpane suit, black shirt, and matching silk tie, and unlike the last time he had entered this room, he offered Mallory no cheeky wink.  His face -- with its exposed stitches, lacerations, burns, and bruises -- was as raw and grave as M had ever seen it.

The hours that followed were an exhaustive account of the events leading up to the explosion, but Bond’s statements verified the reports of those who had spoken previously.  

Senior Intelligence Officer Dane Rasmussen -- embedded for nearly a year with a cell of Hungarian nationalists working out of Paris -- had got word to Six the terrorists had decided to explore a new path to fund and solidify their partisan concerns.  They had hired a skilled boffin who had just put the finishing touches on code they intended to use to destabilise world economic markets. 

Their first target:  The United Kingdom. With so much focus on the lead up to the Scottish Independence Referendum, they felt the UK ripe and vulnerable for such an attack.

Though not untalented with computers, Rasmussen quickly discovered he did not have the skills necessary to retrieve or destroy the programme.

He requested that R or another senior-level technician be deployed to assist.

The Quartermaster refused.  

R had only recently come out of a Lupus flare up, and Sana Cordahi was four months pregnant.  Neither had been in the field before. Q, however, had undergone the same basic training as all agent recruits and had taken refresher courses every two years.  Mansfield had insisted her future Quartermaster understand all aspects of the job and be able to protect himself should the need arise. He had been out in the field twice before, though not since becoming Quartermaster.

_ He _ would be the one to go.

“The Quartermaster volunteered?” asked the Director-General of MI5.

“He did, ma’am,” stated Bond.

“M and Ms Sato -- R -- have stated that you objected to him doing so.”

“I did.  I felt it was too dangerous to have so senior a member of the SIS in the field.  Particularly the Quartermaster. His knowledge and skills are simply too valuable a commodity.  I believed it would make him a target.”

“Even with a Double-O as capable as yourself for back up?”

Bond’s reply chilled the room.  “Given the reason we’re all here, I believe the answer to that is bloody obvious.”  

One of the men in the front row sighed.  The other muttered darkly -- “Idiots!” -- not entirely under his breath.  Even the Foreign Secretary had the good grace to look chagrined.

M noted the tight set of Bond’s shoulders as he continued with his statement.  How he sat in the chair like a monolith: hard and unyielding.

Resolute.

A married couple on a day trip from London, Bond and Q arrived by train.  Might stay the night. Just a quick, needed change of scenery. You know how it is.  

They rendezvoused with  SIO Esme Balan through whom Rasmussen had communicated.  The nationalists had taken over a small block of flats in  _ Dix-huitième _ not far from the  _ Cimetière de Montmartre _ .  A planned meet with an arms dealer later that night in  _ Treizième _ would ensure all but two of the group would be away from their digs.  Bond would take care of the guards whilst Q obtained the programme or, barring that, make damned sure they’d never be able to use it.

Things had gone smoothly at first.  Though 007 hadn’t liked the extremely limited number of access points, they’d infiltrated the compound with little resistance, Bond taking out the guards with ease.  Up to the first floor where Q found the server room right where Rasmussen indicated it would be. Q cut through the first layers of encryption with little difficulty but things bogged down noticeably once he’d reached the fourth level, and the system started to fight back.

“Fight back?” asked Lady Smallwood.  “Explain.”

“The Quartermaster indicated that it was a blend of obfuscated code and adaptive encryption.  Flexible. Modifying its protections and throwing up new blocks in the face of his infiltration.”

“Was time a factor?” pressed the chairwoman of the ISC.

“Time’s always a factor, but the Quartermaster felt things were moving quickly enough it wouldn’t be an issue.”

“But it became one,” she pushed.

“Yes, well, when the entire operation turns out to be a setup orchestrated by a compromised agent, time suddenly becomes the last thing you worry about.  Bullets tend to take precedent,” Bond retorted.

“You ignorant bint!”  Far from a mutter this time, the man in the gallery was immediately censured by Lady Smallwood.  

“If you cannot contain yourself, you will be escorted from these proceedings,” she threatened.  “Need I remind you that your presence here is a courtesy which may be rescinded at any time?”

“You do not need to remind us,” said the other, placing a hand on the sleeve of the man’s well-tailored black jacket, urging him to sit.  “My brother and I thank you for this courtesy. I assure you, there will be no further interruptions.”

Another tug to his sleeve and the man sat, pale face echoing the fury M was quite certain raged inside his Double-O.  Fury that was contained behind his frosty expression.

For now.

As previously stated by R and Lena Moore -- who had been jointly running comms for the mission -- Q had only just downloaded the unlocked program to a pair of miniature smart drives when all Hell broke loose. 

The members of the cell hadn’t been across the city meeting with arms dealers in  _ Treizième _ .  They had been lying in wait down the  _ rue _ , actively surveilling Q’s progress so that they could pull the now accessible computer code from their own servers.  The boffin they’d hired to write the programme had grown greedy and refused to provide the key with which to unlock it unless paid extra.   They killed him, instead, deciding it easier to obtain a new boffin than deal with their current one.

“You know this how?” asked the head of GCHQ.

“He told us.”

“Why would he do that?” he sounded incredulous.

M only just managed not to roll his eyes.  He liked his GCHQ counterpart well enough, but Peter Greening was an academic.  Had never served in the military let alone been in the field on a mission. Consequently, he had no bloody clue.

Bond laughed coldly before answering.  “I’ve never met a criminal who doesn’t love the sound of their own voice.”

“So Dane Rasmussen gave them the Quartermaster,” said the Foreign Secretary.

“It would seem.”

During a conversation with R in the hours immediately following the mission, Mallory learned Rasmussen had worked closely with Q in the years before he became Quartermaster.  They had become friends of a sort. Close enough that Dane would know Q would never have authorised R to go into the field given her illness. Rasmussen had used R as bait to lure his true prey into the open.

“Rasmussen's personnel file indicates nothing that would suggest anything other than a loyal agent.  Why would he do that?” the Secretary continued.

“Money,” Bond replied.  “A lot of it. Or so he indicated.  If you want further insight into his motives, I’m afraid you’ll have to see him in Hell.”

“Yes.  Because you killed him.”

“I did.”

“Why?” demanded the Director-General.  “He’d been embedded with that cell for nearly a year.  The information he could have provided-”

“Because the traitorous skullfuck was going to put a bullet in Q’s brain.  Reason enough, don’t you think? I’d kill him again if I could,” Bond growled.  He took two deep breaths to compose himself, during which the board said nothing.  

Their expressions said enough. 

_ Keep it together, 007, just a bit longer _ ,  M thought.   _ Don’t shoot the bureaucrats. _

A firefight ensued at Rasmussen's death.  Outnumbered and outgunned, with R’s guidance, Bond and Q managed to fight and shoot their way to the ground floor.  Though shot through the upper arm, Q managed three kills of his own. The last of which saved Bond’s life.

Then someone tossed a pair of grenades.  

The explosion brought down most of the building on their heads. Somehow both Bond and the Quartermaster managed to survive the blast, but fallen beams and massive pieces of burning debris had separated them save for a hole near the floor, far too small for Q to slip through.

Communication with Six severed, the Quartermaster ordered Bond to evacuate the building via the exit R had been guiding them toward.  One of the smart drives had to make its way back to Six: Q had downloaded far more than just the computer programme they had been sent to retrieve.  The intel was critical. He would find another way out.

“And you followed that order?” Lady Smallwood asked.

“Eventually,” Bond replied after a beat.

“You delayed?”  She looked up from the pad on which she had been jotting notes.  “Why?”

Bond hesitated again.

“ _ Why _ did you linger, Commander Bond?”

“I tried to dig him out,” he admitted.

“You tried to rescue the Quartermaster despite his  _ orders _ to the contrary,” said the ISC chairwoman.

“I tried to rescue a  _ friend _ .”  

Something about the way he said it -- ‘friend’ -- caught Mallory’s attention.  

It was common knowledge at Six that Bond and the Quartermaster had been sharing a flat for nearly a year.  Speculation was rife as to just how much  _ else _ they were sharing but other than a few overheard comments in the canteen one morning -- “Gemma, if Bond and Q aren’t shagging each other senseless yet, they will be soon.  Oh, to be a fly on  _ that _ wall!  The ‘eye sex alone is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen!” -- as far as Mallory knew, both men had only ever been completely professional and impartial at work, so he’d left it alone.

Double-O Seven’s deposition continued -- Q’s repeated order, Bond’s continued refusals but ultimate compliance, the whiff of natural gas he caught on the air as he retreated … the second explosion -- but Mallory heard little of it for it was then that Gareth finally pieced everything together and called himself thrice an idiot for not seeing it sooner.

Bond’s strenuous objections to Q going into the field, ignoring an order and trying to dig him out, the way he’d kept trying to get back into the burning remains of the building until Balan -- who had been waiting three streets over to facilitate the exfiltration -- was forced to cold-cock him with her service weapon and drag him back to her car, the increasing rage and tension in his frame and in his words as he testified, the very clothes he wore … 

Black, blacker, blackest.

Christ.

The man before him wasn’t just an agent testifying about the loss of a colleague -- a ranking member of the intelligence services -- in an operation that left 12 hostiles and two civilians dead in a fire that burned so hot only their ashes remained.

He was a widower.  Married or not, it didn’t matter.  

Bond was  _ grieving _ .

And here, sat before a clinical, passionless panel of bureaucrats more concerned about protecting their own arses than anything truly moral or just, James Bond had just shared the events of the final hours and actions of the man he loved.

Bugger.

“Is there anything else you’d like to add, Commander Bond?  Anything you’d have done differently?” asked Lady Smallwood, bringing Mallory’s attention back to the discussion at hand.

_ Only about five thousand different things, I’d wager _ , Mallory thought, or such was his interpretation of the way Bond’s hand reached instinctively for a weapon not on his person, resulting instead in a clenched fist atop the table at which he was sat.  Or as much of a fist as he could make with the slightly bloodied bandages wrapped around his hands and fingers. Medical indicated Bond had severely abraded the skin in his attempt to pull Q from the rubble.

“Only this,” Bond said.  “The Quartermaster believed I objected to his presence on the mission not only because I thought it an unwarranted security risk but because he believed I didn’t consider him a reliable agent in the field.  That because he was a boffin, I saw him as a liability. If I have one regret, it’s that I fear he died still assuming such when nothing could be further from the truth.”

Bond shifted in his seat, but it was the subtle shift in his tone that Mallory noted.  Save for those few times when the idiocy of the questions riled him, Bond had related the events in a detached, dispassionate way as if he was writing one of the AARs he was so terrible at filing.  That indifference was now gone. Bond was speaking from what was left of his heart. 

Mallory doubted anyone but he -- and perhaps Moneypenny if the way she had suddenly taken to clutching his hand was any indication -- realised that or even cared.

“I want it clearly stated and on the record that the Quartermaster’s actions, decisions, and orders were beyond reproach,” Bond said.  “He saved my life at least twice in the middle of a firefight that would have made lesser agents panic, he ensured the intel would be received by MI6 no matter the cost to his individual person, and through it all, he had only the safety and security of the Commonwealth and its assets at the forefront of his mind.  The Quartermaster was equal to  _ any _ active Senior Intelligence Officer in the field.”

Bond swallowed hard but did not drink from the glass of water he had been provided.  

“And whilst Double-Os typically go out alone, I have worked with others in the past, and the Quartermaster was, by far, the most skilled and reliable partner I have ever had.”  Those not listening carefully would have missed the hitch in Bond’s voice when he said the word ‘partner’. “It is my opinion that The United Kingdom now faces a period of greater risk, uncertainty, and threat because of the Quartermaster’s death.  The magnitude of this loss … is immeasurable. ”

Mallory held his breath, waiting to see how the enquiry board would respond to so atypical a response, but they said nothing, seemingly allowing Bond’s words to sink in.  At least for a moment.

“Thank you for your candid testimony and your heartfelt words, Commander Bond,” Lady Smallwood said.  “You are dismissed from this hearing for the time being, but we will call upon you again should we have need.”

Bond rose from his seat.  His expression was as dark as his words.  “I wish you luck in the attempt, ma’am.” 

He turned on his heel and save for a moment when he exchanged a short nod with the Quartermaster’s brothers, strode from the room like Death personified.  The echo of the wooden doors slamming shut behind him heralded the destruction to come. 

“You’re certain none of the cell survived that inferno,” Mallory whispered to Moneypenny.

“No evidence of it, sir,” Moneypenny confirmed.  “They’re all dead.”

Fuck.

He stood from his seat in the gallery, gesturing for Moneypenny to follow him.  She snagged her coat and handbag, and they rushed from the chamber together. Eve was too experienced as an agent and with her boss’ occasional eccentricities to question why; Lady Smallwood, on the other hand, was not, but just as Bond had done, Mallory ignored her protests at his interruption to the proceeding.  He had bigger concerns at the moment.

“Recall Trevelyan immediately,” he said the moment they were in the corridor, Moneypenny keeping pace in her indigo Pigalle Follies as Mallory practically ran for the entry. “Jansen’s in Paramaribo.  He can handle what’s left in Caracas. Perfectly capable of doing so on his own but send out Shah if he whinges overly much. We’re going to need Alec on home soil.”

A grieving 007 with no one on whom to exact revenge?  Mallory had read Bond’s file. He knew what had happened after the Lynd incident, but this --

This was a disaster in the making.


	11. Snow Squalls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’d be looking for him. Of course, they would. But he knew how not to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in this. This chapter has been written for a while, but the next one is not finished. I had hoped to keep at least one chapter ahead, but that's not going to happen for the foreseeable future, and I didn't want people thinking I had abandoned this story. That is not the case.
> 
> Just ... life ... LOL
> 
> I also wanted to get this up in time as a birthday present for a dear friend of mine. I don't know if angst is the best way to say "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!", but I think it'll probably work.
> 
> My thanks again to Boffin1710 and Springbok7 whose alpha and beta work has been indispensable to me throughout. Couldn't do this without you, loves. Ta!

**Snow squalls** \- brief, intense snow showers, accompanied by strong, gusty winds. Accumulations may be significant.

* * *

  


Bond’s fist caught the fucker on the side of his head: a sucker punch since the prick had already turned back to his companion to continue the complaining that had so annoyed Bond, to begin with.  

He’d come into the pub, he and his mate, sitting _right_ next to Bond in the corner -- though there were still vacant spots in the centre of the bartop in spite of the crush -- and proceeded to whinge and moan about absolutely bloody everything: his girlfriend, his boss, the itch of his jumper, his demanding mum, the watery drink he’d just been served, the greasiness of the chips.  

With each complaint and grievance, Bond felt his patience thin and his ire rise.  Both of which he’d been struggling to manage since leaving the enquiry.

He hadn’t gone … home.  In fact, he’d been back to the flat only once to grab a few changes of clothes.   Taking only what he needed for the short term. Quick and efficient. Mission-like precision.   He hadn’t lingered.

Hounded from the place by the ghosts of memories.

He’d come to this pub, deep in the borough of Lambeth, directly from the chamber in Whitehall, looking for a degree of solitude amongst people.  At least until he figured out where to go.

Solitude he was now being denied.  In the span of fifteen minutes, Bond had learned about every possible pain and offence and perceived tragedy of this man’s life.    

The gobby shite hadn’t a sodding clue what real pain was.

Bond told him as much.  

And told him to shut the hell up.

Words were exchanged.  

Along with an invitation.

“What’re gonna fuckin’ do?  Hit me?” The shite -- three stones bulkier and a head taller -- pointed at the bruises and burns and stitches on Bond’s face, the bandages on his hands.  “Looks like you’ve already come out the loser once before. Go away, old man, before I finish what they started,” he scoffed and turned back to his mate.

Bond stood and smiled.  It was not a pretty one, but who was he to reject such a polite offer.

He followed the first punch to the head with another to the arse’s jaw before sailing in with a right to his eye, dropping him to the ground.

“Davy!” shouted his mate who glanced at Davy only once before launching himself at Bond.

Bond grabbed him by the lapels on his jacket, pivoted, and using the man’s momentum, sent him crashing into a group of tables along the bank of windows.  Tables that were filled with customers.

And what had started as a private disagreement between two men descended into a brawl involving the entire establishment.  

But then, Bond hadn’t chosen to drink in a pub frequented by the after-theatre crowd.

Chairs and punches flew with equal frequency.  The publican had taken shelter behind her bar, rising up every so often to crack an empty bottle over the head of someone seeking to join her.

In the thick of it all, Bond threw punches and elbows with a vengeance.  If someone came at him, he dropped them to the ground or sent them soaring over his shoulder into the wall or into an assailant sneaking up on him from behind.   

Broken bottles and switchblades were no deterrent, they only added to the piquant flavour of the fight.  

He’d fought off far worse in the field.

Bond had just head-slammed a chap into the bar top when he saw him.

A tall, slight, jumper clad bloke with dark curls picking himself off the ground where he’d been tossed like so much rubbish.  Blood dripped steadily from above his right eye. He swiped at it with his sleeve, smearing it down the length of his face, before jumping back into the fray.

Bond lost sight of him in the crush, and though he _knew_ it wasn’t the Quartermaster, the shade of memory caught him in its icy grasp.

_Get us out of here, 007!  I’ve got our six._

Blood trickling from the Quartermaster’s forehead and his wounded arm, dripping down to soak his gun hand forcing him to use it in his other as they fought their way to street-level.  Pain in his eyes. Jaw set and determined.

Fuck!  

No!

A minute later, Bond was on the street, the brawl still raging inside the pub as he made his way around the corner, slipping into a narrow alleyway away from the street lamps and the CCTV cameras.  He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes but the images of the Quartermaster were still there, running past his mind’s eye in slow-motion, allowing Bond to see every scratch, every wound, every drop of blood that hit the floor.  The skilled way he fired the gun, even in his off-hand, aim only slightly off for it.

The sights and sounds and smells of that flat in the _Villa Pierre Ginier_ \-- of the Quartermaster -- assaulted Bond with a vengeance and then -

_GRENADE!_

Bond only just kept himself from hitting the ground.

He slammed his fist into the brick wall, instead.  

A crack and pain surged through his already abused hand, radiating up his arm, but it pushed the shades back.  

Clarity through physical suffering.   _This_ he understood.  It supplanted a deeper, more intangible hurt.

One he couldn’t begin to understand but that would soon consume him.

_Get out of here, 007.  You’ll never get me out.  There’s too much debris._

_Not leaving the Quartermaster behind._

_Stop digging.  That’s an order, 007!  Six must get one of the drives._

_Not. Without. You!_

Forehead pressed into the rough brick, Bond drew in a deep breath … and another and pushed his broken fist into the wall.  Centring himself on the sharp agony.

_Leave me, Bond.  I’ll find another way._

He turned, skin scraping against the stone, and stepped away from the wall.  Hand tucked protectively in the pocket of his torn jacket, Bond stepped back into the street and began to walk.

To where he neither knew nor cared.  
  


* * *

 

“Sir, I think we may have found Bond … or at least his general vicinity,” Tanner said, poking his head into Mallory’s office.   

Gareth looked up from the files spread across his desk.  He’d been trying to work, focus on the things he could control, but his mind kept coming back to 007 and the potential disaster brewing somewhere on the streets of London.

“Where?”

“Brixton.  Been monitoring radio chatter.  The Met’s responding to a pub brawl’s got out of control and spilt out into the streets.  Can’t find the one who started it, but his description matches Bond.”

“Christ!”  God only knew what Bond would do if cornered by some young constable just doing their bloody job.  “Contact Scotland Yard. Tell them to stop their search. We’ll take it from here.”

“Already done, sir.  Moneypenny, Kardin, Flores, and King are kitting up now to go find him.”

“Tranq guns _only_ ,” Mallory ordered.  “Best of my knowledge, he’s unarmed, but even so, he wouldn’t kill a friendly.”

“You certain, sir?”

Gareth couldn’t entirely blame Bill’s scepticism.

“The man’s grieving, Tanner.  Something his psych profile suggests he’s never done before -- not after Lynd, not even after M -- so no, I’m _not_ certain.  This is as much unknown territory for us as it seems to be for him.”  He sighed and dropped his face into his hands a moment, exhausted by the events of the last five days, before looking back at his Chief of Staff.  “But if this is how he’s reacting to Q’s death, something he had _no_ control over but feels he should have done, I’d imagine he’d do anything to avoid compounding what he’s already going through.”

“I hope you’re right, sir.”

So did Gareth.  

Bond was an asset, to be sure, and whilst not quite a friend, Mallory nevertheless had great respect for him.  Yes, there was Bond’s potential risk to the public, but M was more concerned about the greater risk to the man himself and wanted him safe and secure.  Gareth remembered bits of what _he_ had been like, of the insanity he had fallen into five years ago when he’d lost Kate, and there were still days where the pain of her death was as raw and agonising as the day she’d collapsed on the floor of their kitchen, felled by the brain aneurysm that had struck whilst he was cooking their eggs.  

“When does Trevelyan get in?” he asked around a suddenly tight throat, shaking off the memories he hadn’t the time for just now.

Tanner checked his watch.  “Eight hours, 13 minutes barring any delay.”

“Send 004 with a driver to Heathrow to pick him up.  I want Scarlet to be the first thing Alec sees when he clears customs.  Brief him on the way in. With luck, by then, we’ll have Bond back with us or at least have an idea of where he might be.”

“And if we don’t?”

“We let Trevelyan do what he does best.  Hunt.”  
  


* * *

 

Bought off some American tourist for £200 and the jacket to his Tom Ford suit, James pulled the hood of the navy blue, Union Jack-emblazoned sweatshirt more closely about his face.  Though there were plenty of gaps in the grid along the outskirts, it became more difficult to avoid the cameras the closer he came to the river. They’d be looking for him. Of course, they would.  But he knew how not to be found.

Evening rush now long past, James was caught up with the after-dinner and pre-theatre crowds along the South Bank, so it was easy for him to blend in with the mob without looking like he was trying to do just that.  He kept his broken fist tucked into the wide pocket on the front of the hoodie. With the other, he deftly unscrewed the cap off the small bottle of vodka he’d bought in an off-license near the National Theatre and took two quick pulls.

He immediately wished he hadn’t.  Just as in the pub and with the bottle of whisky he’d picked up in Walworth and the one of bourbon he’d grabbed near The Shard, it tasted like petrol in his mouth and sat about as well in his stomach.  

Disgusted by both the drink and himself, James threw the bottle into the nearest bin and edged his way past the queue in front of a food truck selling ice cream on The Queen’s Walk in front of Royal Festival Hall.

_Get out of here, 007.  You’ll never get me out._

_Not leaving the Quartermaster behind._

James tightened the fist in the pocket and pain flared anew.  If the numbing effects of drink were to be denied him, this would have to suffice.  He continued his purposeful walk toward God knew where, drawing only as much attention to himself as needed to keep the cameras -- and those watching them -- disinterested.  

_That’s an order, 007!_

He crossed at Westminster.  Thought to purchase a cap from a street vendor, but a shift in the weather had the fog rolling in, serving his purpose far better than some kitschy souvenir.  Hide though he could from surveillance, James could not shake the wraiths that still pursued him, hounding his thoughts …

_Leave me, Bond.  I’ll find another way._

Hiding in plain sight among the tourists still buzzing about Parliament in spite of the increasing fog, James made his way down Abingdon St, cutting through Victoria Tower Gardens, manes nipping at his heels, driving him toward ...

Lambeth Bridge.

_The glowing lamps were shrouded in mist so heavy only their general shape was hinted at, but brackish water at the base of the bridge’s pylons glinted in that diffused light, looping and eddying in such a way that James felt as if he was standing at the foot of the bridge itself instead of just looking at an image of it._

They had been James’ first thoughts of the framed print that hung on the wall of the flat.  The photo shot on one Q’s many nighttime journeys through the city. Another strategy to keep his mind ordered and at peace.

Taking the steps from the park to street level two at a time, James stood at the footing on Millbank looking across the water at those five, red steel arches.  Their matching lattice inserts above. The familiar granite piers, half-hidden in the fog, below.

Q’s bridge.

Not as iconic as Tower nor as well known as London, but wherever else Q’s wayfaring had taken him, it always brought him back here.

Beautiful.  Mysterious. Alive.

“It’s been here a long time, Lambeth has,” Q had said of the bridge one of the few times he permitted James to join him on his late-night wanderings. “Far before any structure conceived of or constructed by man.  It’s seen a lot.”

Q’s smile had been kenning and enigmatic as he stared at it across the water that night.  

“It knows things.”

That there were many layers to his lover did not surprise James, but that was the first time he wondered just how deep they went and how far back into the past.

It was the recent past that had dogged James across the city to this place that meant so much to Q.  Before his eyes, the whirls and whorls of eddying waters shifted to hard, unyielding lines of fallen beams and collapsed debris.  

_James ..._

_No.  Q, I’ll not._

The fog thinned to fine plaster dust hanging in the air.

_You have to go._

The glowing light of the bridge lamps pockets of burning rubble.

_Please, love …_

James crashed his fist into the solid foundation of Lambeth.

His rage and agony echoed back at him from the silent, watchful, immutable stone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm borrowing this quotation from a post that's making the rounds on Tumblr right now. It's beautiful and sums up the importance of comments on a fic. Please consider it. I'd appreciate it. Especially right now.
> 
>  
> 
> “If you have consumed what I have laboured and invested in to create, and if you have found any enjoyment in it, please tell me so that I can recharge enough to do this again.” ~ kdreeva via Tumblr


	12. Flood Stage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knew what the flat looked like. 
> 
> Empty. Soulless.
> 
> Unchanged since he’d returned after being released from Medical two nights ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the amazing comments on the last chapter. Each one was deeply appreciated, especially given the content of that chapter.
> 
> Ta!

**Flood Stage -** the level at which a body of water's surface has risen to a sufficient level to cause adequate inundation of areas not normally covered by water, causing an inconvenience or a threat to life and/or property.

* * *

  
  


James dropped his keys into the basket on the table just inside the door.  The wooden boards of the foyer groaned under his feet with an ancient, aching permanence he’d never noticed before.  One that reverberated up through his feet, legs, and belly to lodge in his heart. 

He paused in the entryway.  

Didn’t turn on the light.  

He knew what the flat looked like.  

Empty.  Soulless.

Unchanged since he’d returned after being released from Medical two nights ago.  He’d rushed about, throwing things into a duffle with shocking inefficiency. He’d remembered the suit and shoes and tie, but only one sock made it into the bag along with two pairs of jeans, half his toiletries, and a loo roll.  Not a single shirt in the mix. He’d stopped at his tailor’s to get what he’d worn to the enquiry.

He’d not wanted to linger over the sight of Q’s teacups about the flat.  

Fastidious in every other regard, the boffin had a mental block when it came to putting his mugs — and  _ only _ his mugs — into the sink let alone the dishwasher when James was away.  He’d lost count as to how many times he’d returned from a mission with 10 or 15 cups scattered about the flat.  Never a problem at work or even at home when he  _ wasn’t _ on assignment, it was something of a minor miracle Q had never run out before mission’s end.  He’d found it oddly endearing, Q’s distraction.

Nor had he wanted to acknowledge the plastic tub sat on the floor near the kitchen pass-through filled with bags of litter, cat food, and more toys than any wee pair of moggies had a right to.  They’d held off whilst he was in Seattle. It was on the train to Paris they’d agreed to finally pick up the kits at the shelter once the mission was over. 

He’d get rid of it all tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow.

Q’s spare pair of specs sitting atop that book on Rommel he’d started in on once James had finished.

The artist’s sketchbook on the cushion next to Q’s spot on the sofa, page open to a half scribbled design for a new rocket launcher he’d been working on.

The big-eared Yoda slippers beneath the bench at the foot of the bed in  _ their _ bedroom, so dubbed just three weeks before Seattle.  

He stripped off the hoodie.  Managed the buttons of his shirt one-handed.  Tossed them in the corner of the ensuite with the rest of his clothes.

He showered as a matter of formality.  Habit.

He was dirty, so he washed.

Numb but for his hand.

Well and truly broken, it screamed and throbbed with each motion.  He focussed on the pain. Let it wash over him in a way the water never would.   

Keep the memories at bay.

_ Q shoving a piece of toast in his mouth, slinging his messenger bag strap across his body as he dashed out the door. _

He used that hand to turn up the heat on the shower.

_ Q laughing so hard at something Ian McKellan said to Graham Norton on the telly he’d snorted. _

He gripped the shampoo bottle, crushing it.

_ Q curling in close to him, sated and sleepy after sex they’d both been too tired to have yet which had been exactly what they’d each needed after a horrific day. _

He cracked the tile of the shower wall with his fist.

He would have ignored the blood except having it dribble all over the floor would have aggravated  Q, so he wrapped it in a hand towel and walked dripping only water into the bedroom. He pulled open first one drawer of the bureau and then another, searching for pair of joggers or sleep pants, or --

Fuck.

No.  

Please.  No.

He’d forgotten he’d put it there.  He’d had it custom-made from a craftsman skilled in such matters.  It had arrived just before he’d left for Seattle. Didn’t put it into the trunk.  Hadn’t wanted it to be part of a scene. Planned to offer it to Q after a dinner out one night.  

Hoped he might consider a bit of permanence.  In this, at least.

Rich black leather brushed to the softest suede along the interior.  Narrow. Three centimetres in width with deep aubergine stitching. The D and O-ring combination was affixed by an oval strip of leather fastened into place by rivets of the same purple hue.  The buckle, the same. 

_ Get out of here, 007.  You’ll never get me out.  There’s too much debris.  _

_ Not leaving the Quartermaster behind. _

_ Stop digging.  That’s an order, 007!  Six must get one of the drives. _

_ Not. Without. You! _

_ Leave me, Bond.  I’ll find another way. _

He’d not listened.  He had kept digging.  Had to get the Quartermaster out!

_ James ...   _

_ No.  Q, I’ll not. _

_ You have to go.  Please, love … _

James picked up the collar from the drawer and fingered the soft, supple leather.

The opening still too narrow, he’d managed to pull enough of the rubble away to see Q’s head and shoulders.  He’d been bloodied and battered, sweatstained and anxious. The rough bits of old timber and plaster and nails had torn at James’ fingers, causing them to bleed, making it harder to --

Q had grabbed his wrist through the opening.  His grip firm. 

_ Sir. _

_ Let go of my arm, Q! _

Q’s response was voiced with desperate strength, focussed purpose, and unyielding supplication. 

_ Sir!  M’lord! Vetruvian! _

James’ head had snapped back as if he’d been struck.  Stunned by the word that hung in the dusty air between them.  The word Q had established but Boy had never used.

**_Vetruvian!_ **

Boy had safeworded.  

The battle he had been waging with obstacles and time ended when that one word was uttered, and the war within himself to comply with the responsibility required of him began.  

_ You can’t ask me to -- _

_ Not asking.   **Telling!** Vetruvian! _

Eyes clear and raging behind his cracked spectacles, Boy released Sir's arm and scooted away from the opening through the rubble on the floor.  

_ Vetruvian, Sir!  Vetruvian!  _

Boy rolled to his feet.  Sir caught only a glimpse of his face as he stood.  Left arm limp and bleeding at his side, he staggered toward the remainder of the staircase.

_ You know what it means!  You know your duty! Vetruvian!  You have to stop. You have to **STOP!** _

Boy disappeared from view.

In that moment, even as it was slipping through his bloodied fingers, Sir finally understood what he had had.  Understood what he was losing. 

Understood the doom to which he was consigning Boy …

But the safeword and the responsibility Sir had assumed for Boy demanded he capitulate.  

Double-O Seven couldn’t obey.  James Bond wouldn’t comply.

Sir had done his duty.

Banging his brutalised hand over and over against the bureau, crushing the collar in the other, the scream torn from James’ throat was primal.  Within it, an age of fury and helplessness and grief he had never allowed himself to feel. Not for his parents. Not for Tracy. Not for Vesper or Matthis.  

Not even for M.   

Each death had fueled his purpose.  Driven him to the next mission and the next and the one after that -

But the Quartermaster … Q … Boy … 

Gabriel.

_ Was _ the fuel.  And the igniting spark.

Bombarded by thoughts and memories, each more torturous than the one before, James' knees buckled, and he fell to the floor.  He couldn’t contain the tears that followed his cry. 

He had no defences.

He had lost the war.

For the first time in his life, James Bond surrendered.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm borrowing this quotation from a post that's making the rounds on Tumblr right now. It's beautiful and sums up the importance of comments on a fic. Please consider it. I'd appreciate it. Especially right now.
> 
>  
> 
> “If you have consumed what I have laboured and invested in to create, and if you have found any enjoyment in it, please tell me so that I can recharge enough to do this again.” ~ kdreeva via Tumblr


	13. Flash Flood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec had spent the bulk of the 14-hour flight from Caracas considering every possible scenario. He’d managed not to let his imagination run away with him ... precisely. He was an Operations Officer, after all; he made decisions based on facts and data as well as his gut instincts, but the fact of the matter was there was little trouble James Bond ever got into he wasn’t able to get himself out of, so whatever mess the man had found himself in -- on home soil, nonetheless -- was potentially catastrophic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments on Ch 12 were remarkable and so very appreciated. I am glad that you continue to enjoy this story even though I'm dragging you all through the emotional wringer right along with James.
> 
> Please continue to let me know what you think.
> 
>  
> 
> In terms of timeline, the bulk of Chapter 13 takes place the morning after James' testimony in front of the enquiry board, four days after the events in Paris.

**Flash Flood:** A flood which is caused by heavy or excessive rainfall in a short period of time, generally less than 6 hours.  These conditions are often produced by slow-moving thunderstorms or tropical systems which make landfall.   
  


* * *

Weapon drawn, Alec Trevelyan slid through the partially open front door of the Quartermaster’s flat. His eyes darted to the security panel on the wall to his right.  No protocols were engaged.

_ The fuck? _

Slipping fully into 006, Alec steeled himself against whatever he was to find in this flat.  It certainly wasn’t going to be good. Christ! Nothing about this was good. The whole shite show had apparently been a bloody clusterfuck from the moment James and Q set foot in Paris, and Alec had no reason to believe that was about to change.  

He’d been back in London for all of six hours.  The Immediate Return Order had come out of nowhere and wholly lacking in details.  “Per M: Return to Headquarters immediately. Double-O Seven in need of assistance.  Travel itinerary to follow,” was all R had been permitted to tell him through emergency comms.    

Alec had spent the bulk of the 14-hour flight from Caracas considering every possible scenario.  He’d managed not to let his imagination run away with him ... precisely. He was an Operations Officer, after all; he made decisions based on facts and data as well as his gut instincts, but the  _ fact _ of the matter was there was little trouble James Bond ever got into he wasn’t able to get himself out of, so whatever mess the man had found himself in -- on  _ home soil,  _ nonetheless -- was potentially catastrophic.

Consequently, Alec’s instinct had been all but screaming by the time he landed in London.  It had taken 004 all of minute to confirm for him he’d been right. 

Scarlet briefed him on the situation on their way into the city whilst Alec changed into the dark clothes R had thoughtfully included in his new kit.  ‘Utterly Devastating’ was the label they were using to describe the operation, Q’s death, and James’ testimony before the enquiry board. Based on the details of Scarlet’s brief, the term was woefully inaccurate.  

“M’s not sure what’s worse.  Having it get out the Quartermaster was killed or that we have a potential rampaging Double-O on our hands.  You can understand why M had R keep quiet on the IRO,” Scarlet finished, passing Alec a bottle of water he drained in three long swallows.

He could understand.  Q’s death left Britain vulnerable.  Weaker. It was only a matter of time before their enemies heard of it and attempted to take advantage.  The longer Six could keep up the fiction the Quartermaster was alive and well, the longer they had to shore up the foundation undermined by his loss.

James on the other hand … 

Alec had been in deep cover in Yekaterinburg during the first six months James and the Quartermaster had shared a flat, but it had taken only one dinner with them upon his return for it be blindingly obvious to him what was so clearly lost on both of them.

The two had fallen completely arse over tit for each other.  It had been amazing, and remarkable, and scary as  _ fuck _ to see.  Given that James was an active field operative, a tragic ending was far too likely, but Alec never expected the tragedy to play out as it had.  

And based on Scarlet’s retelling of Moneypenny’s account of the statement he gave to the enquiry board, neither had James.

Alec had witnessed the ways in which James had sated his wrath after Tracy.  Vesper.

Scorched Earth.

Alec was certain neither woman had meant as much to James as Q, but this time, there was no one left upon whom James could exact his revenge.  They were already dead. As such, anything was possible.

_ Der’mo! _

Whilst the news of Q’s death rattled Alec -- he’d liked the brilliant, cheeky lil shite -- he pushed that aside.  There was work to be done.

“There’s no evidence he’s left London let alone Britain,” Scarlet confirmed when he’d asked.  “Whatever Bond’s going to do. It’ll be here.”

“I’ll find him,” Alec said when he got out of the 4x4.  He’d had the driver drop him off in Deptford. As close to his first hunting ground as he was willing to have them take him.

“God help us if you don’t,” Scarlet said out the window as they pulled away from the kerb.  “God help  _ him _ !”

Taking the kit R had assembled  -- complete with the same model tranquiliser gun the others had used in their fruitless hunt in Lambeth -- Alec pulled up the hood of the black coat he wore against the rain and scuttled through back alleys and mews, eventually taking the Greenwich foot tunnel to the Isle of Dogs.  He trusted Scarlet as much as he trusted any of the other Double-Os whose number wasn’t Seven, but there were some things no one from Six needed to know. 

First on that list was the transient community near the Newcastle Draw Dock where he and James had both gone to ground in the past.  They had established no safe house there because there were no houses, and the only thing safe about it was in what the otherwise deeply impoverished community provided in abundance:  anonymity. The denizens asked no questions and had turned ‘not noticing’ into an art form. 

It was a sanctuary for those who were lost and did not want to be found.  The perfect refuge for a tetherless Double-O, but after two hours of searching, it was clear to Alec that James had not found a haven there this time.  

Alec’s next stop took him back across the city to a private, five-star hotel tucked in Lyall Mews in Belgravia.  The Torrington -- from its Michelin star-rated cuisine to the in-room steam baths and on-call masseuse -- oozed luxury and excess from every room just as ruin and deprivation seeped from the very pores of the Docklanders.  The two places had absolutely nothing in common. 

Except what they did.

Just like the Docklanders, the staff at The Torrington held as tightly to the privacy of their clients as a priest to the confession of a sinner.  They, too, could be counted on to answer no questions, and if Dumbo himself had flown through the lobby with a feather clasped tightly in his trunk, every last one would have claimed not to have seen a bloody thing.

But when Alec checked into the suite he and James had used in the past, and the manager asked if Mr Sterling would be joining him later, Alec had his answer.

Tired and jet-lagged, Alec had looked longingly at the king-sized bed with its combed cotton, 1000 thread count sheets, but he wouldn’t rest until he found James.  Too much was at stake. He settled for a quick wash under the 12, pounding jets of the thermostatic shower to shake off the exhaustion and the grime and was back on the street again before the morning rush had started.

He came up empty at the tiny flat above the dry cleaners in the Tower Hamlets and again at the one below the chippy in Shoreditch. He wouldn’t be able to check The Pig’s Trotter until the pub opened at 11.

That he hadn’t yet found James combined with the fact the man  _ hadn’t _ left a trail of destruction in his wake … well, by mid-morning, Alec’s concern had started to tip over into worry.  If James wasn’t acting out against the world, he would be acting out against himself. Alec didn’t want to think too hard on the implications of that, and he absolutely did  _ not _ mention his concern to Moneypenny when she rang him for the fourth time that morning.

Alec turned off his mobile when he hung up on her.  He’d pay for that later, but he needed neither the distraction nor the oversight. 

What he  _ needed _ was to find his friend. 

James hadn’t left London.  Of that much, Alec was certain. 

No.  James wouldn’t leave London because London was James’ home.  But more than that, London was Q, and Q, too, had become James’ home.  It had taken Alec less than an hour in their company to see that.

Distance himself from it?  Fuck yes. Alec knew James.  He’d avoid the refuge -- the home -- he’d inadvertently built with his Quartermaster.  It would hurt just too damn much to do otherwise.

The only things James ever ran from were his own feelings.  Alec knew that, too. 

Like recognised like, after all.

But they each had safe houses the other knew nothing about, and if James was holed up in one of them, it could be weeks before any of them saw the man again.  

If ever.

So Alec made his way to Q’s flat in Westminster, hoping to find some clues as to where James might have gone.  

It wasn’t going to be easy, though.  The Quartermaster had been quite proud of his security system when he’d shown it off at dinner all those weeks ago.  The two agents Mallory had sent the night before had been unable to breach it but reported that there was no external evidence James had returned to the flat.  Alec wasn’t overly keen on the notion of the current from 1000 volts of electricity searing his heart if he wasn’t able to hack the system, and given it had been designed and installed by the Quartermaster, the odds were definitely  _ not _ in Alec’s favour.

Consequently, the unlocked door was tad unexpected.

The kitchen and sitting room were clear.  The grey day beyond the half-open curtains did little to illuminate the room but enough that he could see the numerous tea cups and mugs scattered on every surface.  No evidence that things had been searched or otherwise disturbed, however. The room had that slightly stale smell that tended to settle in when unoccupied for too long, and Scarlet said Q had been sleeping in his branch in the week leading up to Paris.  Four days ago.

Q’s office, clear.  Servers humming in the corner.  On the workbench, a soldering iron and a variety of tools for his ‘tinkering’.  All awaiting artisan hands that would never touch them again.

The air was even mustier in the guest bedroom than the rest of the flat.  Alec noted the absence of James’ personal items on the bedside table, the neatly made up bed looked like it was awaiting a guest rather than a regular occupant.

James had taken up permanent residence in Q’s bed, then.

He’d taken not two steps down the corridor toward the master bedroom when he noticed the difference.  The air was a tad fresher here. Humid. 

Someone was inside.

This door, too, was ajar.  

Large, but not overly so, the room was the private sanctuary of the men who lived here -- his friends -- and while Alec wasn’t wholly comfortable with this intrusion, he pushed through slowly with his shoulder, Sig -- not the tranq -- at the ready.  

It was darker in here, the blackout curtains fully drawn.  

Wardrobe was clear.  Same, the ensuite.

Eyes ranging high and low, he took in the rest of the room.

Nothing out of the ordinary.  He recognised a pair of James’ reading spectacles atop a book on the bedside table closest to the door -- the defencive position -- along with an empty water glass next to a small pile of paracetamol.  An old-fashioned alarm clock, two phone chargers, a jarred candle, a notepad and pen, and an open glasses case sat on the other. A dressing gown -- plaid -- draped on the foot of the neatly made bed. Reading chair with a cosy throw and a lamp in the corner, two teacups on the table at its side.  

An old steamer trunk against the wall beside it.

He didn’t see --

There.  On the floor, peeking out from the far side of the bed in front of the bureau … he knew that road-rash scared ankle.

Fuck!

“James!”

His friend was unconscious, naked and shivering on the ground.  It was then Alec noted how cool the flat was: heat turned down when Q started staying at Six. James looked like he’d been through the losing side of a war: his injuries from Paris stood out starkly against his wan skin, left hand wrapped in a bloodied towel.  

Alec tucked his Sig into the holster at his back and dropped to his knees at Bond’s side.  Wrapping him in the dressing gown from the bed, Alec pulled him off the floor and to his chest.

“Enough of this, you wanker.  Wake up!” Tucking James’ injured hand out of the way, low across his belly, Alec rubbed hard on James’ sternum.  “Come on, you lazy sod. Up you get. Things to do.” 

James groaned and shrank away from the painful pressure on his chest.  Alec prised his swollen eyes open, and the blue that peered back at him was dim and hazy and surrounded with red, nothing like the clear, piercing ice Alec knew so well.  Dried salt caked the corners of James' eyes and stained his face.

Christ. 

“‘lec …”

“Yes.  Yasha. I’m here.”

James looked about him but didn’t seem to recognise his surroundings.  His tongue undulated against his dry lips. Unable to utter the word itself, he mouthed the word “water.”

Alec propped him against the bureau, bolstering him in place with the pillows from the bed, grabbed the glass from the bedside table, and filled it in the ensuite.  Pausing long enough to flick on the shower, he returned to find that James had not moved a muscle, though his shivering seemed to have increased. His eyes were half open, but when Alec pressed the glass to James’ lips, he was barely responsive.  He swallowed the water he was given on instinct alone, collapsing against the bureau when Alec pulled the glass away.

“Nope.  Not doing this, mate.”  He needed to get James warm.  Stripping out of his own clothes, and mindful of James’ hand, he hauled his friend to his feet and half carried, half dragged him into the shower.  

The black leather collar caught in the fingers of James’ right hand slipped and fell to the rug, unheeded.

It took every drop of hot water to even ease James’ shivering.  Alec was vigorous in towelling him dry and managed to get him into a warm jumper and a pair of flannel sleep trousers and woollen socks whilst James sat slumped on the toilet.  

Alec covered himself in the dressing gown he found on the back of the door and set to tending James’ hand.  Caked with dried blood, the hand towel had affixed itself to the skin beneath, so Alec had soaked it under the spray whilst keeping James from falling to the floor of the shower.

“ _ Bozhe moy _ ,” he breathed when he pulled the last of the fabric away and saw what lay beneath.  So swollen, and mangled, and bloodied … it hardly looked like a hand anymore. 

Shattered.

Like James.

They were all of them broken, the Double-Os.  The nature of their job made it inevitable. But there was a difference between being broken and actually breaking.  James had broken. Was breaking still.

His grief made it such.

James was his comrade in arms, one-time lover, long-time friend and found brother, and seeing him like this shifted a part of the bedrock upon which Alec had long built his understanding of his world.  Though he supposed it was inevitable, this. You could only suffer so many losses. Lose so many people you loved before …

Q.

Bloody, buggering fuck!

As Alec had feared, unable to turn his rage at Q’s death against anyone else, James had turned it on himself.  Physical pain to quell the emotional.

A lifetime’s worth.

It clearly hadn’t worked this time.

“Yasha,” Alec sighed.

He cupped James’ face in his hand, long fingers cradling the back of that blond head and pressed their foreheads together.  Allowing, for a moment, a bit of his own grief to settle in his heart as he empathised for his friend and what he had lost.

“ _ Moy brat _ .  I’m so, so sorry.”

James didn’t even blink in response.

The first aid kit he’d found in the cupboard beneath the sink was far from enough, but Alec did what he could with the hand, got James tucked away in bed beneath every duvet and blanket he could find in the place, and turned up the heat.  James needed medical attention, but Alec couldn’t predict how James would react once inside the corridors of MI6. A civilian hospital was out of the question for still more reasons.

He could think of only one solution.

Alec dressed, turned on his mobile, and made the call.

“It’s Trevelyan.  I’ve found him, but I need your help.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This still holds quite true, so I'm continuing to borrow this quotation. 
> 
> “If you have consumed what I have laboured and invested in to create, and if you have found any enjoyment in it, please tell me so that I can recharge enough to do this again.” ~ kdreeva via Tumblr


	14. Wind Chill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You weren’t going to get him out, James. Q did the only thing he could. Save your life. It was the only thing that mattered to him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for the delay. We're in the final two months of the school year, and things are always insanely busy at this time of year.
> 
> I hope this very long chapter makes up for the wait.

**Wind chill** (Wind chill index) - a quantity expressing the effective lowering of the air temperature caused by the wind, especially as affecting the rate of heat loss from an object or human body or as perceived by an exposed person.  


* * *

 

“That’s about all I can do for now, ” Dr Martel said with a final squeeze of the black fibreglass that encased James Bond’s arm.  “At least the cuts from Paris on his right hand have healed enough. They won’t need the bandages anymore.”

The physician had spent the better part of two hours cleaning and stitching the deeper lacerations and setting the broken phalanges and metacarpals into place before wrapping the lot in stockinette, web roll, and finally the fibreglass.  All but Bond’s thumb and his little finger were immobile in the cast that ended in the middle of his forearm.

No longer shivering, her patient lay on his bed, covers pulled to mid-chest, medicated and asleep.  After her initial examination, she’d dosed Bond for the pain she knew he was in but refused to voice.  In fact, he’d not said a single word the entire time she’d been there. Not even a grunt to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions about his health. Unwilling or unable, Martel had not been entirely sure.  Not catatonic, but certainly unresponsive.

This was not the 007 she knew.  This wasn’t even the man she’d patched up three nights ago.

Sleep would heal.

“Surgery?” Alec asked from the chair he’d pulled to the opposite side of the bed -- Q’s side -- to observe the proceedings.  

Martel finished checking the IV line from the bag she’d hung from the curtain rod down to the cannulae in Bond’s right arm and pulled off the nitrile gloves.  Wrapping them up in the sterile drape she’d placed over Bond’ lap whilst she worked, she tossed the lot in the bin bag she’d snagged from the kitchen for appropriate disposal later and took up the tablet from the bedside table.  Flicking through the images she’d taken of James’ hand with the portable digital X-ray machine Q had designed for Medical, she shook her head.

“Not if I’ve done my job right,” she said.  “But then, I’ve never had to set breaks like this in the field -- so to speak -- not even in the middle of a war zone.”  

At only 38 years old, Isa Martel was MI6’s Assistant Chief of Medical.  Late of the RAMC where she’d spent 13 months of her service embedded with a SAS troop, she was a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners sort who’d managed to engender the respect of most of the Double-Os with her frank, yet surprisingly compassionate, manner.  She knew when to look the other way and when to stand her ground and make a fuss, and as such was the only one Alec or James would ever let treat them.

“I’m going to need to see him in Medical, though. These are severe breaks,” Martel said, gesturing with the tablet as she stood.  “The only reason I didn’t call for transport now is that, by some miracle, they weren’t compound fractures. I’ll need to do further tests to ensure he hasn’t done permanent damage to his hand that could keep him out of the field permanently.”

“He’s not going to Six!” Alec snarled, rising from his chair.

“Easy Cerberus,” Martel quipped up at the agent who now loomed over her, not intimidated in the slightest.  “I’m not disagreeing with you, so save your growl for Mallory, yeah?” She patted his chest then angled him to face the sleeping Bond.  “It doesn’t take Hoffler from Psych to diagnose grief-triggered depression, but I think it’s safe to say he’s also suffering from delayed shock from the entire incident.  Moneypenny indicated he was still in agent-mode when he gave testimony. He’s had _no_ time to process Q’s death.  This … is the result.”

“I’ll have their fucking heads.”  Alec was already envisioning the confrontation with Mallory when Martel twitched his elbow.  He looked down at her. She barely came to his shoulder. Her ginger hair was pulled back in a bun somewhat messier than usual.  It made her look … softer. It was unsettling.

“Oh, because _that’ll_ be so incredibly helpful.”  

So much for softer.  

“I’ve called you a fool to your face more times than I can count, Trevelyan, but I’d never thought you an idiot until now.  Tell me how storming into Mallory’s office or even having it out with him over the phone will do Bond here any good?” Alec opened his mouth to explain but Martel didn’t give him the opportunity.  “There’s only one answer to that question: it _won’t_.  Look, I don’t know you nearly as well as I would like, but even I can see you’re wearing your anger and grief over what’s happened to Bond and the Quartermaster like it’s a jumper made of thorns and brambles.  You don’t need to go near Six any more than 007 does. You have only one thing you need to take care of in the coming days: James Bond.” The grip she had on his shoulder was as compassionate as it was insistent.  Typical Martel. Alec found himself responding. His tension easing somewhat under her warm hand.

“What about Mallory?”  he asked.

“You let me worry about M.  I’ll give him a reasonable explanation as to why you called me instead of reporting in as you should have done.”

Alec was stunned.  It was one thing for her to sneak medical supplies out of Six for a covert meet with two operatives who were technically in the wind.  It was something else again to defend that choice openly to the head of the SIS -- to take the heat -- for all of them. She was risking too much.  

He said so.

Martel’s scoff caused James to stir but he did not wake.  She waited until he had settled again before explaining in a more hushed tone.  “One of these days I’ll explain to you the role of the Chief Medical Officer -- which is what I am until Wallern returns from his knee surgery in seven weeks -- and the duty she has in determining ‘field fitness.’  This is literally part of my job, Trevelyan, but even if it wasn’t …” she turned her focus back to Bond, “I counted Q as a friend. He and I had plans for Six. And nothing about this is right.”

She cleared her throat, straightened her spine, and turned from the bed.  Alec said nothing about the dampness at the corners of her eyes as she turned about.

“I’m writing orders that Bond be given a minimum of a fortnight of compassionate leave for spousal grief,” she said, talking over her shoulder as she gathered supplies and stowed them in the two large duffles she had brought with her.  “You, as well … two weeks, emergency family leave. You’re still listed as Bond’s next of kin, so you’re in charge, God help us. You know what to do when the saline runs out. You’ve pulled your own cannulae out enough times, after all.  Just make sure to keep pressure on the site until the bleeding stops or you’ll have a mess on your hands. I’ll email you post-procedure care instructions and a few articles on the grief process. _Read them_ !”  She paused in her task, studying the look on Trevelyan’s face that was caught somewhere between worried, angry, and trepidatious.  “Let me handle the rest, Alec, your _only_ job is to help Bond back to himself,” she said reassuringly.

“And if I can’t?”  

“Then be here for him until he finds his own way.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re supposed to be in Venezuela.”

The weary baritone jolted Alec from his half dose in the chair he’d moved to James’ side of the bed. He blinked once, dismissing sleep in an instant.  James’ eyes were open, but he hadn’t moved from the position Dr Martel had left him in: head and torso propped up on several pillows, injured arm low across his belly, right arm straight along his side to keep the IV unencumbered, though Alec had removed the line and cannulae hours ago.  

The day had fled whilst Bond was sleeping.  It had been full dark for some time, yet Alec had kept the lights low.  Only the floor lamp in the corner provided any illumination, but James took in the darkened room and his condition with what seemed a bit more clarity than when Alec found him that morning.  For all that, however, he was as bad off as Alec had ever seen him.

Haunted.  Hunted. The look in James’ eyes was one Alec had never seen before, and to say that it worried him …

“Change in plans.  Was needed here.”

James considered those words along with what Alec had _not_ said: everything that was implied in their absence.  It was too much. He couldn’t handle ...

“You’re not.  Get out,” he said.  

The words were low, ragged.  Torn as though dragged over shards of glass.  Too well, Alec knew, the sound of a voice raw from anguished screaming.

“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked, apropos of nothing.

“Get _out_ , Alec!” James said with a bit more force.  He desperately clung to the unravelling threads of his composure.  He couldn’t let anyone, not even Alec see ...

“Not going to pick a fight with you over something that is simply _not going to happen_ , so … food?  There’s not much in, but there’s some tinned soup.  Potato and leek.”

Q’s favourite.  

Rather than respond, James rolled away from Alec to escape, but at the sight of Q’s empty side of the bed and the collar that now sat atop the bureau beyond, immediately rolled back over, eyes clenched shut.

No.

Christ, no!

“I … I can’t …”  He curled up on his side, face buried in his arms as the memories assaulted him again.  “I can’t … no more!”

“Can’t what, James?”  Alec slid from the chair to the mattress at his friend’s side.  He didn’t touch him at first, but when James didn’t respond beyond repeating ‘I can’t,’ Alec did something he hadn’t done in well over a decade.  Not since a joint mission gone horribly wrong left them each in need of physical comfort that had nothing to do with sex. He kicked off his shoes and climbed in behind James beneath the covers and wrapped himself around his friend.  

“You don’t have to,” he said in James’ ear, fingers curling in his short hair.

But something within James demanded an accounting.  Insisted he purge what was poisoning his soul. He needed to be judged.  Found guilty. Held accountable by someone -- something -- other than his own conscience.  Punished for his transgressions.

It felt easier to speak the words with Alec behind him, guarding his back as he always had.  There, but not _there_.  No eye contact.  No facial expression to rub his face in his brother’s judgement.

“I left him there.”  The words were so raw that Alec closed his eyes at the agony within them and pulled James still closer.  

Over the course of the next hour, James shared in broken words what had happened in Paris.  It was _not_ the sanitised, clinical accounting he had given the enquiry board.

Coarse.  Unedited.  Real. Devastating.  Guilt-ridden.

James Bond’s emotions stripped bare for none but Alec Trevelyan to see.

“You weren’t going to get him out, James.  Q did the only thing he could.  Save your life.  It was the only thing that mattered to him,” Alec said when James came to the end of it. He’d not known about the additional dynamic James and Q had woven into their relationship until he’d seen the collar on the ground next to the bed, and though it didn’t surprise him, it did add a layer of complexity to James’ already tangled grief.  “If you’d not left when he used the safeword … Yasha … it would have destroyed _everything_ you had with him.  Ruined the trust between you. Q would still have died, but he’d have done so thinking you’d betrayed that.  Betrayed _him_.”

“He was alive when I left him.  I sent him to his death. I _killed_ him.”

“No!”  Alec’s voice was harsh in James’ ear.  “That fucking traitor _Rasmussen_ killed Q!  The _terrorists_ killed Q!  Not you. _Never_ you!”  Even as he said it, he knew James didn’t believe him.  Thought he had killed Q by walking away. His grief wouldn’t allow him to think any differently.  Alec understood -- all too well -- but it wouldn't stop him from repeating the words as many times as he needed to.

“Don’t … don’t want to talk anymore.  So fucking tired, Alec.” James lay slack in Alec’s arms.  He’d used up all the energy he had in the telling of it all, but though he was physically exhausted, the shades of memory -- Tracy, Vesper, Mathis, M, Q -- continued to taunt him from the periphery of his thoughts.  Thoughts that never ceased except in sleep.

“I’ll let you rest, then,” Alec said, knowing sleep was an escape from the all the pain James had just dredged up.  He couldn’t blame him. Things wouldn’t be any better when he woke, but maybe the brief respite would lend him strength to face them.  

He started to pull away, but James’ clamped his good arm tightly around Alec’s draped across his chest.

“Don’t … go.  Please.”

Alec pressed his forehead against the back of James’ head and stayed.  
  


* * *

 

James slept deeply for some time, Alec dosing at his side, and in the small hours of the morning, Alec managed to get some food into him.  Thankfully, there was a tin of tomato bisque hidden behind the potato and leek because James steadfastly refused that offering.

The half bowl of soup and slice of buttered toast went down easily enough, but after that, little in the days that followed could be called easy.

They woke mid-morning to the arrival of groceries courtesy of Dr Martel who had placed an order for them with Waitrose, Alec only just managing to keep the delivery boy from pissing himself by shoving his Sig into the back of his jeans beneath his t-shirt when he finally opened the door wide after a rather vigorous interrogation.

When the groceries were finally stowed, Alec returned to the bedroom to see that James, though awake, hadn’t stirred from the bed.  Not even to use the loo, from the looks of it. James said nothing when Alec indicated he was going down the hall to wash, suggesting that James do the same.   

Thirty minutes later, Alec, clean and having tossed together a simple meal of herbed eggs and smoked salmon with toast, called out from the kitchen that lunch was ready.  He waited five minutes and called out again. When there was still no response, he returned to the master bedroom, and though the door to the ensuite was in a different position than before, James was again in bed.  Awake. Eyes trained on the black leather collar sat on the bureau.

Nothing Alec did or said would convince James to get up let alone eat.  And Alec flatly refused to bring the food into the bedroom. The soup and toast had been the sole exception he was willing to make.

“Fine.  But I’m not going to be your nursemaid,” he said, somehow managing to keep the exasperation from his voice.  “If you want food, you’ll have to come out and eat at the table.”

By late afternoon the next day, Alec was no longer attempting to conceal his exasperation or his worry, though he saved it for Dr Martel.  “He gets out of bed only to use the loo. Hasn’t eaten nor said a word in two days. Sleeps all the time and when he’s awake he’s just … not there.”

“Is he staying hydrated?” the doctor asked over the mobile.

“‘Bout the only thing he _is_ doing,” Alec said, looking at the empty water bottles he’d tossed in the recycling bin in the kitchen.  “Doc … you said be here for him, but I …”

“Stubborn shite in the best of times, that man is,” Martel conceded, “but these are the absolute worst of times for him.  He’s figuring out how to grieve. All we can do is go along on the journey with him for now.”

“I can’t just wait and watch-”

“Of course not.  Look. If he’s still not eating by morning, I’ll come by and hook him up to an IV again, but that’s not how I’d like to go about this.  You know him better than any of us, and you’re devilishly clever. Find a way to get him to respond.”

Ten minutes and a roll of cling film later, Alec hauled James out of bed and tossed him -- literally -- in the shower still clothed.  “I’ll just do it again if you even _think_ about not washing.  You reek!”

Though he still said nothing, the momentary spark of anger that flared in James’ blue eyes as he picked himself up from the tile under the spray gave Alec some satisfaction.  “Glad to see you’re still in there. Come to the sitting room when you’re clean.”

Knowing his friend was exactly the stubborn shite Martel proclaimed him to be, Alec didn’t give James the opportunity to return to the sanctuary he’d made for himself.  Stripping the bed and tossing everything into the wash, Alec stowed the duvet and the pillows in the spare room and wrestled the mattress off its frame, propping it up against the wall.  If James wanted to go back to bed, he’d have to reassemble everything first -- one-handed.

It was nearly an hour before James appeared in the sitting room.  Hair damp and still unshaven, he was dressed in the clean t-shirt and sleep pants Alec had left for him on the bench at the end of the mattressless bed.  He scanned the room from the end of the corridor, taking in the minute changes of the last days: teacups gone, Q’s design book and specs moved to the coffee table from the sofa cushion, Alec’s backpack and duffle sat on the ground next to the fireplace.

From the kitchen doorway, Alec watched James examine the room before sitting in the comfortable reading chair facing the window.  The curtains were pulled back, offering an impressive view of Big Ben, with The Eye beyond, radiant in the early evening sun. Giving James time to settle himself, Alec returned to the task he had started in the kitchen.     

When the last glow of twilight had faded, he sat a plate of chicken sandwiches and a steaming cuppa on the table next to James and propped himself against the window casement, blocking his friend’s view of the gleaming city.

Waiting.

Eventually, James’ eyes -- their blue again dull and now rimmed with red -- met Alec’s.

“You can’t hide from this, James.  And I’ll not let you. The bed is for sleeping _only_ .  Out by 8 a.m. or I’ll drag you from it like I did today and toss that sodding mattress to the street.  Shower. Daily. You’ll take your meals in here, and you _will_ eat at least twice a day, or I’ll have the Doc over here to pump what you need through your veins.  She’s got her kit ready to go, so don’t think it’s an empty threat. And tomorrow … we go for a walk.”

It was defiance that flashed in James’ eyes this time, and Alec smiled broadly in response.  “And who do you think’ll win _that_ fight, _moy brat_?”  He pointed at the plate.  “Eat your food,” he said gruffly, getting up from the window.  

There was much Alec wanted to say, but he simply didn’t know the words to use.  As he passed on his way back to the kitchen, however, he pressed his hand to James’ shoulder, hoping his friend understood.  

It would have to do.

Though still silent, James was surprisingly compliant the rest of the night and the next day, following all the instructions Alec had given him.  Even the short walk -- only to Abingdon Street Gardens and back -- had gone well enough that they picked up a takeaway coffee on the way home. They watched some telly that night after dinner, and by the end of the day, Alec felt a slight spark of hope.

A spark snuffed out instantly the next morning when Alec went in to wake James and found him sitting on the edge of the bed staring intently at the Walther in his hand, finger on the trigger, palm print indicators glowing green.  

Alec would never remember exactly what he said to James to get him to put the gun on the nightstand and pop off for a wash, but whilst James did, Alec grabbed a bin and searched the flat as best he could for weapons.  In fifteen minutes he unearthed six handguns, seven knives, and a sniper rifle in the closet by the front door and had the lot of it locked in the boot of his Audi in the car park below the building before his friend got out of the shower.

Even in his wrecked state, James Bond was still a Double-O whose keen eyes missed nothing.  Alec knew James noticed the missing Walther and by the semi-tossed state of the rest of the flat had probably guessed that the rest of the weapons were gone, too.  He still said nothing, but Alec noted the resignation that had settled again into his expression. James took his chair in front of the window where he sat for hours, neither eating nor drinking.  He rose when Alec suggested a walk, but rather than join him at the door, James turned for the bedroom where Alec found him curled up on the mattress facing the collar on the bureau, seemingly asleep.

Deciding to leave well enough alone, Alec returned to the sitting room and tried to figure out what to do next to bring James back.

“Where is it?!  What the fuck did you do with it, Alec?!”

Alec woke with a start at the angry roar, reaching for his gun -- the only one he’d not locked away -- before his eyes were even open.  He tried to jump from the sofa, but James was already on top of him, cast pressed hard against Alec’s throat, eyes murderous with rage.

“Where is it, you fucking bastard?!” James snarled.  A chop punch to the neck let Alec break James’ hold and slide off the sofa, but James recovered quickly, tackling him from behind and pinning him to the ground as they rolled as one in front of the fireplace.  Twisting, Alec kneed James in the stomach and launched him back across the room with his feet, scrambling upright before James could come at him again.

“What in the hell are you talking about?!” Alec demanded, arm outstretched to ward off his friend.  He didn’t want to pull his weapon. He _really_ didn’t.

“The bin!” James growled, finger pointed at the corner of the room nearest the kitchen.

Alec risked a quick glance at the empty space.  “The fuck, James? You mean the _cat_ supplies?!”

“Where. Are. They?!”

“The spare bedroom!  I kept tripping over the damn thing.”

James stalked to the room in question and within moments had the bin of supplies back in its original corner.  “Don’t fucking touch it again!”

“The hell?  James --” Alec didn’t understand.  James had barely reacted to having his weapons taken away but he lost his shite over a couple of bags of kibble and half a dozen squeaky mice?

“Never _again_!”  James reached out, fingers of his good hand curling around a shallow china bowl that sat on the dining table, one he had brought back for Q from Odessa, and launched it at Alec who sidestepped the missile which exploded harmlessly against the wall behind him.

But the action stirred something within James, and before Alec could stop him, James was tearing apart the sitting room in a fit of rage.  Even one-handed the damage he did was considerable. Table lamps crashed to the floor, the coffee table was overturned -- Q’s specs and design journal landing dangerously close to the fire in the hearth -- books were ripped from their shelves and the mantel was swiped clean of its nicknacks.  

When the rage storm finally passed, James was on his knees next to the fireplace, hunched over a framed photograph of Lambeth Bridge he had ripped from the wall.  The glass, shattered. The print, torn.

James’ sobs filled the otherwise silent flat.  

Alec, who had let it all play out, watching from the dubious safety of the foyer, knelt next to James who immediately turned to him, head buried in Alec’s lap, arms wrapped around his torso, clinging to Alec like a drowning man to driftwood in the sea.  Alec ran his fingers through James’ hair, refusing to voice the platitudes always used in this situation because it wasn’t ‘alright’ and things weren’t going to be ‘okay.’

Not for a long time.

When James no longer shuddered in his arms, Alec hoisted him to his feet and half-carried him to the bedroom.  He stripped James to his pants and got him under the duvet. A few more minutes had Alec back from the kitchen with several bottles of water and two of the painkillers Martel had sent over from Medical.  James downed the pills mechanically, barely responding even when Alec took a wet flannel to his face. Though Alec had been sleeping on the sofa, he, too, stripped down and crawled in behind James as he had done the first night.   This time, however, James rolled toward him and buried his face in Alec’s neck. Alec pulled him closer still.

“It should have been me,” James murmured sometime later, just before sleep finally claimed him.

As he held his friend, Alec tried hard to bury his fear that unless James could gain some semblance of control over his grief, it was only a matter of time before he joined Q.  

That fear, along with half a dozen others, ranged through Alec’s mind as he kept watch over James throughout the long night.

 

* * *

 

James didn’t expect the giggling, but the initial, suppressed snort quickly fell into titters that soon had him smiling even as he drew his fingers through dark curls.

“That’s you back then?” he asked, nuzzling Q’s ear before pressing a kiss to his neck at the hairline, trailing the caress of his fingers down the line of Q’s spine and up again.   

“Mmmmm ... yes.  Gone long, was I?”  The reply, made between giggles, was very much Q, not Boy.

“Ages …”

It had been a particularly intense scene.  Each of them pushing edge of their limits, and the discoveries that resulted had been powerful and rewarding.  It had taken Q nearly an hour to emerge, so James could only imagine how high he had flown.

“And the giggles?”

Q twisted around in James’ arms, and the look on his face made James’ heart catch in his chest.  Q was incandescent. “I feel bloody marvellous!” Pressing a chaste kiss to James’ lips, Q slung a loose arm around his shoulder, burying his face in James’ neck.  “It’s you, know know,” he admitted in the half-light between them. “Your strength.”

He felt the huff of breath against his skin that suggested Q wanted to say more but the words did not come.  Instead, Q tangled himself more inexorably with James and fell to sleep.

James closed his eyes and let the sensation of holding Q in his arms wash over him, as soothing as aftercare in its own way:  the softness of Q curls and skin, the gentle huff of his breath as he slept, the curious gurgle from his belly, the musk of sweat dried on his skin.

Cupping the back of Q’s head a moment, he slid his hand down, fingers pressed lightly to the flesh of Q’s neck.

Bare.

Where James’ collar should sit.

He knew this is where he was meant to be, but ...

Would Q accept it?  Would Q accept _him_?

There was only one way to find out.  He would start to make his plans in the morning.

Just as James was falling into sleep, he heard Q whisper against his neck, “You’re strong.  So very strong. Please remember that.”

What?

That made no sense.  Strong about what? James tried to open his eyes, to ask Q to explain what he meant, but sleep tugged him down.

“Everything will be alright.   _You_ will be alright.”

James clasped Q more tightly to him but he had somehow slipped away.

Q?

_I’ll find you again, love._

**Q?!**

_I’ll find you again …_

James woke with a start and a gasp and with icy tendrils of panic slipping through his veins.  The shifting of a familiar warm body on the bed behind eased the dread that threatened to overwhelm him, however, and James rolled over to take comfort in Q’s presence.  To banish the unsettling dream.

An anguished sob was torn from his throat by the sight of Alec Trevelyan where Q ought to be, and once more the true nightmare set in.

Q was dead.

James fought with the duvet and fled the room for the en suite.

He didn’t hear Alec’s concerned shout as he bolted the door behind him.

For the taunts of the dead screamed far louder.

 

* * *

 

The ninth day after Q’s death was the worst yet.

Alec experienced a brief moment of hope when James finally left the en suite, two hours after his nightmare had woken them both at dawn.  He was clean, scruff growing ever longer, having showered without any prodding, but when he emerged from the bedroom, James didn’t even acknowledge the absolute destruction he had wrought on the sitting room the night before.  

He shuffled through books he’d torn from shelves and over shards of glass and porcelain that, had he been barefoot, would have shredded his feet.  When his progress through the room was impeded by an overturned chair or the coffee table, he looked at the piece of furniture with eyes that saw but couldn’t comprehend.  His own reading chair was practically the only thing undisturbed in the room. It had been knocked slightly askew from its position in front of the window, but apparently not enough to impede the view for James sat in it as it was and remained there for the rest of the day and into the night.

Alec tidied the room, more to save his own sanity and because it needed doing than any real desire to clean.  He swept up the shards and stacked the books, returned the furniture to its appropriate spots, and set the bulldog back on the mantle, but he made certain not to move _anything_ out of the room.  He kept things as close to their original positions as possible, leaning the photograph of Lambeth Bridge in its broken frame against the wall from where James had ripped it.

James noticed none of it, however.  He refused food, water and all attempts Alec made to engage him in conversation.  Silent. But more than once Alec caught his lips moving in mute conversation. With himself or with someone who was not there, Alec could only guess, but by the end of the day, he was fairly convinced that whatever it was James saw out the window, it was not the London cityscape.

Alec was just about to call Dr Martel -- it didn’t matter it was nearly two in the morning, she’d told him to call at any time -- when a rapid, demanding knock sounded on the front door.  It was repeated less than five seconds later by another. The third was followed up by posh voice insisting, “Open the door, Bond. I know you’re in, and we must speak immediately.”

As he had throughout the day, James didn’t even react to the noise, but when the knocking didn’t cease, Alec -- who had just about reached the end of his tether -- grabbed his Sig, disarmed the security system, and yanked open the door, pointing his weapon at the man on the other side.

“What in the fuck do you want?!” he growled at the tall man with dark curls who didn’t even flinch when confronted by an angry Double-O with a gun.

“Ahhh, yes,” he said, giving Alec a quick glance up and down.  “Trevelyan, I presume. Step aside, I need to speak with Bond. Now!.”

“Who the fuck are you?!”  Alec demanded, index finger sliding from the trigger guard to the trigger itself.

“Someone who’s about to change his life, I’d imagine.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “If you have consumed what I have laboured and invested in to create, and if you have found any enjoyment in it, please tell me so that I can recharge enough to do this again.” ~ kdreeva via Tumblr


	15. El Niño

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Oh come now, love. It’s been nearly 21 years. Hardly the greeting I’d hoped for after all this time."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, longer than expected between updates, but I'm still plugging along. RL work is approaching a crescendo with graduation on the horizon. Not mine, my students’. I’m an English teacher. 
> 
> Hopefully, this long chapter suffices. 
> 
> This chapter would not have happened without the help of Boffin1710 and Springbok7. Thank you, dear ones.

**El Niño**

The cyclical warming of East Pacific Ocean sea water temperatures off the western coast of South America that can result in significant changes in weather patterns in the United States and elsewhere. This occurs when warm equatorial waters move in and displace the colder waters of the Humbolt Current, cutting off the upwelling process.

* * *

 

As the shadows of dusk lengthened and consumed the world outside the flat, James continued to sit in his chair before the window as he had done all day.  Save those few intrusions by Alec to get him to eat, he’d been left alone with his thoughts, his memories, and the view of yet another grey London day. Comforting enough, he supposed.  A comfort that disappeared once night fell. Now James found himself desperate to ignore the reflection in the pane, wanted to avert his gaze, but he was unable to tear his eyes away from the sight in front of him on the window sill.

“Hello, James.”

He didn’t reply.  He tightened his fingers on his thighs. 

“Oh come now, love.  It’s been nearly 21 years. Hardly the greeting I’d hoped for after all this time,” Tracy said.  She was just as he remembered her. Elegant and seductive. Timelessly beautiful in that way all first loves remained ... so long as he avoided looking at the bullet hole in the centre of her forehead and the trickle of blood that oozed down her face.

James tried not to look.  She wasn’t real. At least that’s what he kept telling himself until he felt the weight and warm closeness of her sitting on the arm of his chair.  Smelt the delicate floral scent of her perfume in his nose. 

“You know, father would have liked him, I think.  Your Q. Quick. Intelligent. Took no shite from anyone, least of all you, James,” she said.  

James didn’t need to look to know that saucy, half smirk would be on her face right now.  The one he knew so well. Had loved. 

“Yes,” Tracy continued, draping herself over the back of the chair, her breath husking against his ear, “I think they would have got along famously.  Too bad Q died before you had the opportunity to introduce them to each other. But then, your life’s been full of those ... missed opportunities. We never even had a chance to enjoy our honeymoon.”

A white carnation materialised in his lap as Tracy stood and wandered across the room to the photo of Lambeth Bridge Q had taken a few months earlier.  “Quite lovely,” she said, sparing James and the form in front of the window a quick glance. “Handsome in his own way. Dark. Mysterious. I can see why you fell for him.”  

Her fingers traced the broken frame.  

“Such a waste.”

 

* * *

  
  


John Watson hefted the groceries in his hands, adjusting his grip on the four canvas sacks he carried.  It was quite late. He’d been the last one in Sainsbury’s before they closed up shop for the night, but he’d wanted to wait until Mrs Hudson got back from her Ladies’ Night so she could keep an eye on Sherlock whilst he was out.

Sherlock had grown increasingly quiet and withdrawn in the five days since the enquiry into his brother’s death had ended.  Nothing about which he’d thus far shared. He spent more and more time in his Mind Palace, sifting through memories of the man John knew only as Q.  Sherlock slept even less than normal, and when he did come to bed to rest, he was oft woken by nightmares that had him clinging to John until he calmed and fell back to sleep, more exhausted than before.

He never remembered the nightmares come the morning.

John knew Sherlock better than anyone.  Knew Sherlock felt things on a much deeper level than he cared to admit -- it was one of the reasons John loved Sherlock so entirely -- but he didn’t always know what to do with the emotions, and the more intense the feeling, the more he struggled with it.  

Moriarty at the pool.  Baskerville. John’s near-death experience with the Garridebs.  The murder of the Kingston infant. Each situation had pushed Sherlock’s ability to cope with feelings to the breaking point, but he’d always managed to get his emotional feet underneath him again.

John had never seen Sherlock like this.  

He’d been able to keep his worry in check until earlier that afternoon when Sherlock refused to even consider a case Lestrade all but begged the consulting detective to take.  Instead, Sherlock had rained down a blistering philippic upon the DI denouncing -- in precise, painful detail -- the investigative skills and competencies of everyone from Lestrade himself down to the most junior PC on the team, pointing out that the night cleaners at Scotland Yard had a better shot of finding the murderer because they, at least, paid attention to the small details.

Lestrade had stormed out of Baker Street, leaving John wondering how in the hell things were going to get smoothed over this time.  Normally, he’d demand Sherlock handle it, apologise for being a complete arse, but … yeah, not an option right now. And John couldn’t explain it away with a ‘Hey, Greg, Sherlock’s brother died, and he’s having a hard time coming to terms with it, so even though he’s being an utter tosser, bear with him if you can’ because no one outside of the family even knew Q existed, though the why of that had never been fully explained to him.   As for Sherlock, John had even rung up Mycroft for advice but found the eldest Holmes brother not unwilling but unable to help.

“I’m struggling with the testimony given at the enquiry, myself, John.  So many unanswered questions. Our brother was special to us all, but he and Sherlock were particularly close, especially in their childhood. Sherlock will come to terms with Q’s death in time, as shall I,” Mycroft had said.  “Keep an even closer eye on him than usual, please. I don’t think I have to tell you that every night is a Danger Night right now.”

For all that it was wholly unhelpful, it was the most compassionate thing Mycroft had ever said in regard to Sherlock.

John turned onto Baker Street, considering all his options.  Sherlock needed distraction, but if The Work wasn’t enough to entice him ... perhaps a change of scenery might help.  He could take Sherlock to the country or even  _ out _ of the country.  

They’d occasionally talked of travelling stateside.  Sherlock had expressed an interest in categorising the various cacti of the American Southwest.  Maybe take a month or so? He’d always wanted to see Colorado. Something about the mountains there fascinated him.  It would most  _ certainly _ be as different a scenery and clime from London as John could manage and hold little if anything to remind the elder brother of the younger.  Give him some space, physical and mental.

Yes. That might do nicely. 

John had just started making a mental list for their travel plans when he caught sight of a large, dark lump on the ground next to 221’s door, partially blocking the stoop itself.

Bin bags?  

No.  The rubbish wasn’t due to be collected until the day after next.   

Then the lump moved.

Yeah, definitely  _ not _ bin bags.

Slowing as he drew near, John sat the groceries on the ground in front of Speedy’s door and carefully approached the figure.  His gun was in his bedside table upstairs. He didn’t  _ think _ he’d need it -- most of their cases lately had ended peacefully with no rage-filled declarations of revenge -- but well John knew how deceiving appearances could be.   One could never be too careful.

The way the person was curled on the ground on their belly, wrapped in an oversized dark coat with the hood pulled up against the chill, made it impossible for John to determine anything about them except they were slight of frame and likely taller than he.  The clothes, though worn, seemed in good repair, making it unlikely it was one of Sherlock’s Homeless Network, but again, anything was possible. It wasn’t uncommon for one to come looking for ‘Mr Holmes’ outside of a case when they felt they had information worth a quid or fifty.  

“Hey mate,”  John said congenially, standing just beyond arm’s reach.  “Look, Sherlock’s not seeing visitors right now, but if you’ve some information for him -”

John’s words were cut off when the lump groaned, but it was the hand that reached out toward him across the concrete stoop that had the army doctor jumping into action.

It was coated in glistening darkness, a sight all too familiar to John.

“Christ!”  

John dropped to his knees at the person’s side and rested a hand on their back.  “Alright, mate. I’m a doctor. I’m going to move you a bit so I can see what’s going on.  Then we’ll get the paramedics, right? Just let me do everything.”

The person groaned and whimpered at the mention of paramedics, but John was already in motion.  He carefully pulled the legs out of the fetal position they had been curled in, hands running down their length, seeking out other potential injuries hidden beneath the dark denim.  No blood, though the right ankle seemed a tad swollen in its boot. John then eased the person onto their back, keeping the neck as immobile as possible. He unzipped the coat and pulled it open, the light from the lamp over 221’s door illuminated a cardi darkly stained with what could only be blood along the right shoulder, disappearing along the sleeve and hidden by the coat.   The cardigan itself was undamaged -- no holes made by either knife or bullet and the zip still unscathed and pulled up snug to the person’s neck -- so whatever was causing the bleeding wasn’t new. He’d -- yes, John saw the dark stubble on the jaw, though the rest of his face was still obscured by the hood -- had an opportunity to change clothes at some point.

“Okay, now I’m going to pull back this hood and check for-”

John jumped back in shock at what he saw, landing hard on his bum on the concrete.

“Bloody buggering fuck!”  He scrambled to his feet. Fingers fumbling with the keys he’d pulled hastily from his pocket, he unlocked and pushed open the door.

“SHERLOCK!!!” he bellowed up the stairs, hoping the man wasn’t so deep in his Mind Palace he wouldn’t hear.  “Get down here!!”

He turned back to his patient but shortly heard the thunder of rushing footfalls on the stairs followed by a worried shout, “John?!  John, what’s going on!”

Mrs Hudson popped out of her flat a moment after Sherlock.  “Oh dear! Is everything alright? What’s all the racket? Do you see the time?”

Sherlock ignored her and was at John’s side on the pavement a moment later.  “Who is it?” he demanded since the way John was hunched over the form made it impossible for him to see the face.  John pulled back, and for an instant, all Sherlock saw was John’s bewildered face staring up at him, then the man on the ground groaned, drawing his attention, and Sherlock’s world shifted on its axis.

He recovered quickly, however, and was soon on his knees, passing his mobile to John, who passed it on to their curious landlady.  

“Mrs Hudson, call Mycroft.  John, help me get him into the flat,” Sherlock ordered before pushing back the dark curls from the forehead of a man he thought he’d never see again.  

 

* * *

 

Vesper knelt in front of him. 

Pale.

Sad-eyed.

Water dripping from her dark curls, tendrils to stuck to her forehead and cheeks, her sodden red dress clings to her lithe form as the icy water that drowned her puddles around her knees, slowly creeping towards her feet. 

James had to will his hand to not reach out to brush the strands away from her face.

“Are you angry with him, too?” She nods over her left shoulder at the window behind her and the shade that sits silently on the sill, right arm dead at his side, blood dripping slowly down his fingers to pool on the hardwood below.  “You were furious with me.”

“He didn’t betray me.”

She tilts her head, cool blue eyes curious.  “Did he not?”

“Don’t!”

“I locked the lift because I knew it would be your honour, your duty, that sent you after me, not your love.  I killed that before I killed myself.” Vesper rose and padded the few steps to the window, water dripping in her wake.   “He played on your honour and your duty as well as your love to get you to leave him behind. You can’t tell me that doesn’t upset you.”

She took the shade’s good hand in hers.  Kissed his bloodied temple above the bar of his cracked spectacles, turned her eyes to James, and smiled that all-too-knowing smile.

James nearly leapt from his chair to strangle the life from her a second time.

 

* * *

 

The youngest Holmes was so insensible with fever the three of them had barely been able to get him inside the front door.  Asking Mrs Hudson to stay below and wait for Mycroft, Sherlock finally had to heft his brother in his arms and carry him awkwardly up the stairs and into the bedroom he shared with John where they stripped Q of his coat and the stained cardigan and laid him out on the bed.  

“What the hell happened to you?” John muttered under his breath, slicing through the blood-soaked cotton of Q’s button down with a pair of sheers from his kit.  He pulled back the shirt, revealing a torso that looked more like a patchwork of barely healed bruises, burns, and lacerations than human flesh, but it was the sutured wound on his right shoulder that had John leaping into full Army Doctor mode.  

“Fuck me!”  

Dark blood seeped from the puckered gaps between the stitches, several of which had been torn.  The wound was swollen and black with infection; angry red tendrils spread out like a spiderweb down Q’s bloodied arm and up his neck.

“John?!”  Though Sherlock’s experiments and investigations had exposed him to far more gruesome and horrifying sights than this, Q was his brother.  

Sentiment. 

John dug about in his kit, gloved up, and within moments was through the stitches and slicing into the partially healed wound with a scalpel.  Putrefaction erupted from within, oozing across Q’s skin and dripping to the sheets beneath him. 

John and Sherlock both recoiled from the sight and the smell.

Q screamed and began thrashing around on the bed in pain.

“Hold him!”

Sherlock slid onto the left side of the bed and did as he was bid as John continued his emergency treatment, mopping up the infection, blood, and bits of decayed flesh as he tried to get a sense of how far things had spread.  Below stairs, the front door slammed and the raised cry of an indignant Mrs Hudson arguing with a dismissive, nasally voice was immediately followed by a rush of footfalls on the steps leading up to 221B. 

“Because it’s Q,” Sherlock said by way of explanation to the bemused expression on John’s face at a sound he never thought to have ever heard:  Mycroft Holmes running up the stairs. 

“You said he died in France.  Work-related,” John stated, assessing his patient’s numerous injuries as Q continued to struggle weakly against his older brother’s hold. “He has a bullet wound, first and second-degree burns, and shrapnel wounds, to say nothing of the secondary issues, like that infection.  Where has he been to get an infection this severe, this quickly! I may not have your skills, but even I know low-level, IT boffins  _ don’t _ get shot and blown up, not even those who work for one of the security services.  So tell me, Sherlock, who exactly  _ is _ Q?” 

“He’s the Quartermaster of MI6,” Mycroft said between gasps of breath as he rushed into the room, grasping the door jamb in his hand.

“Wait.”  John spared him a quick glance over his shoulder.  “I thought it was a nickname. You’re telling me Q is  _ Q _ ?!”  Mycroft and Sherlock exchanged a meaningful look but said nothing.  John sighed. “Christ. Your family. We  _ will _ talk, you and I,” he said to Sherlock, pointing at him before returning to his task.

“What is his condition?” Mycroft asked, stepping closer to the bed.  He barely recognized his brother with his dark curls flat and dirty against his scalp and his normally pale skin flushed red.  Q’s green eyes were open but unfocused, searching the room for something as his lips mouthed words likely he only understood in his feverish world.  

“Critical,” John said, tossing the soaked cotton pads into the bin he’d hooked over with his foot.  He finished taking Q’s pulse again and caught the reading on the digital blood pressure cuff on his opposite arm.  “Pulse is rapid and thready. Blood pressure’s way too low. Respiration is shite. Had to open that wound before … look, Sherlock insisted we wait until you got here before calling for a bus, and given who Q is, that makes sense now, but he needs to be in hospital.  The infection is killing him.”

“Six has an excellent Medical department.  I’ll arrange for transport-”

“NO!”  Q who had continued to struggle weakly at Sherlock’s hold finally managed to slip free.  Rolling toward John, he cried again in pain at the pressure the move put on his injuries and fresh blood oozed down his arm from the shoulder wound, but he would not be deterred.  He pushed weakly at John and crawled toward Mycroft across bloody sheets. He slapped feebly at the front of his brother’s suit jacket. After three tries his fingers managed to hook in Mycroft’s pocket, and he tugged on it.  “Myc, ‘lease … to me.”

When Mycroft looked down at Q in that moment, he saw not his brother as an adult grown, but rather the toddler he once had been, tugging on his eldest brother’s pocket, eyes wide, desperate for him to listen to what he had to say.  Mycroft, eleven years Gabriel’s senior had never had the time. Never had the inclination nor desire to listen to the prattlings of a three-year-old, no matter how articulate and brilliant he was. 

He was more than ready to listen now.

But as he bent down to meet his brother’s pull, Q’s strength left him, and he fell back to the mattress, eyes desperate in a way Mycroft had never seen them before.  He unhooked Q’s fingers from his pocket and pressed the hand between both of his. “What is it, brother? What do you have to say?”

“Probably the same rhyme he’s been muttering the last ten minutes,” Sherlock interjected from the other side of the bed.   

“What rhyme?” Mycroft eyed Sherlock who recited what Q had been murmuring in his delirium. 

“The lion and the unicorn / Were fighting for the crown / The unicorn beat the lion / All around the town.”

Mycroft felt his blood run cold.  His voice was flat and toneless. “Say that again.”

Sherlock nearly rolled his eyes in annoyance but the look on Mycroft’s face stayed him.  He complied instead. 

“That’s not right,” John said of the centuries-old children’s rhyme of the heraldic animals representing England and Scotland.  “The lion beats the unicorn, not the other way around.”

Pushing John aside, Mycroft cupped Q’s face in his hands.  “Look at me, Q. Tell me. I need to hear it _from_ _you_.  What has the unicorn done?”

Q blinked hard and when he opened his eyes again, they were somewhat more focused than before.  He grasped Mycroft’s wrist. “Unicorn … beat lion ... unicorn beat ... uni ... beat-” 

“It will be alright.  You’re safe now. Doctor Watson’s going to take care of you.”  Mycroft turned to John. “We can’t take him to Medical or to any of the hospitals in London.  Can you stabilise him for transport to Oxfordshire? I’ve a home in Watlington. Bastin House.  It’s a private location for dignitaries who need a secret and secure location to … dry out, among other things.  The medical facility is state of the art, and its staff fully vetted. We need to take my brother there as quietly as possible.  We can’t risk medical transport. Too conspicuous given the notoriety of this address. We’ll have to take my sedan or a large van.”

John considered what he had on hand.  The kit he’d assembled since coming to live in Baker Street was far better than what he’d used on patrol in Afghanistan, and Watlington was only an hour away.  Though complicated, he’d transported critically injured soldiers far greater distances during the war, and they’d survived. 

“I can,” John assured and began searching for a vein in Q’s hand to place an IV cannula, he’d need fluids among other things, “but it’s far from ideal.  What’s wrong with MI6’s Medical?”

“The lion and the unicorn.  They’re on Six’s official crest.  It’s code. Only a few of us know what the reversal means.”  Mycroft already had his mobile to his ear, waiting for a call to connect.  “The SIS has been compromised.” His eyes sought out Sherlock’s across the room. “Rasmussen wasn’t the only traitor.”

 

* * *

 

“You stayed with me, James.”  

René Mathis, the retired, ageing agent stood in front of him, greying hair perfectly coiffed back from his handsome, craggy face.  His familiar light coloured, rumpled linen suit was the same as last time James had seen him, save for the blood. As violent as Mathis’ death had been, no evidence of it lingered on this ghost’s form.     

“We forgave each other and  _ her _ .  Do you remember?”  Mathis asked. 

René, too, took the hand of the wraith who refused to speak.  

“But there is something more you must do now, James.  Something you did not do before.” Two pairs of soulful, ageless, knowing eyes stared back at him, pleading.

“You must forgive  _ yourself _ .”

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes later the four men were in a subtly armoured Mercedes panel van with heavily tinted windows on Marylebone headed out of London.  It was still the middle of the night and the normally congested roads were largely free of traffic. For once, Mycroft rode up front next to his driver whilst Sherlock and John huddled over Q’s prone form stretched out in the back.  Thankfully, Q had been awake and somewhat coherent when they’d taken him down the stairs but was in and out again courtesy of the painkiller John had fed through his IV cannula which was now connected to a saline drip hooked above them. 

“Are you angry with me?” Sherlock asked in a hushed tone as he handed John yet another medicated compression dressing.

Q moaned in pain when John applied the fresh dressing to his wound.   “It’s alright, mate, we’ll have you somewhere comfortable soon,” he said, squeezing Q’s good shoulder before lashing the dressing in place with adherent wrap, but he spared a glance for Sherlock, “Angry about what?”

“I never told you Q was the Quartermaster.  You get angry when I don’t tell you important things.”  He gestured at his brother with his chin. “This seems like an important thing.”

“So why didn’t you?  I have the security clearances.  Have had since the pool. You know I’d not say anything.”

Sherlock hesitated.  His reason had never made logical sense to him, but it had felt right, which had only ever confused him further, but ...  “It didn’t seem my story to tell.”

“That’s hardly stopped you from telling me things about Mycroft, much to my frequent dismay.”

“Q’s not Mycroft.”

John chuckled in spite of himself.  “No, he’s not, is he?” John had met Q only a handful of times before this, and though a bit prickly and standoffish, he was the brother who seemed to have an easier time interacting with other people.  John could say he genuinely liked Q and had grieved the man’s death. “No, love. I’m not upset with you,” he assured Sherlock. “When it’s something that potentially puts you in danger, that’s when I get angry.  But not this.”

“So fuck off … Sherlock … an’ stop talk ... ‘bout me like ‘m not here.”

“Oh ho!  Welcome back, son,” John said with a smile for Q who looked up at him and Sherlock with eyes that were for once clear and lucid, if not pain-free.  “How do you feel?”

“Is death … supposed to ... hurt ... this much?”

“You’re quite ill,” John admitted.  No point in lying to  _ this _ patient.  “I daren’t risk another dose of painkillers until I get you settled, evaluate you properly.  Won’t be long. Can you stand it?”

Q swallowed dryly and nodded.  “Can manage ...” He turned his attention to Sherlock.  “Where?”

“Oxfordshire.  Mycroft has a secure medical facility there.”

“Course he does … James be there?  Need to see … safe ... couldn’t risk flat … might be compromised.  Came to you.”

John and Sherlock’s heads snapped up at the same time, eyes meeting, each set wide with realisation and consternation.

“Christ!”

“Bond.”

They’d completely forgotten about him.  Sherlock reached for his mobile.

“No!” Q insisted, hand flailing out to clutch at Sherlock’s wrist.  Drugged and in pain though he was, he was not so insensible as to be unable to deduce the situation.  “Mobile ... Six issued …”

“It could be compromised, too,” John concluded.  “Sherlock …”

Sherlock knew he wasn’t as adept at reading people’s emotions as John, but he’d at least learned to read  _ John’s _ emotions, and what he saw on his love’s face was the same as what was in his own heart.   If John had been taken from him and miraculously returned from the dead, Sherlock would want to know as soon as possible.  He would rain Hell down upon anyone who kept that knowledge from him. 

“Right.  Mycroft, where are we?” Sherlock demanded over his shoulder.

“Nearing Paddington Station.  Why?”

“Have your driver pull over.  Now!”

“Sherlock, time is critical -”

“So is my errand.”  He locked his gaze with Q’s.  “Q’s left something behind, and I mean to fetch it.”

“Sherlock -”

“Mycroft, just  _ do _ it!” snapped John.  “It’s necessary.”

“Each one as bad as the other,” Mycroft muttered none too quietly from the passenger seat, but the van slowed and pulled for the kerb.

“James … he won’t … believe …”  Q said, his grip tightening slightly on Sherlock’s wrist, pulling him closer.  “Won’t trust you.”

“Then give me something that can come only from you.  Something I could never know otherwise.” The van stopped.  “A code word …” He hesitated over yet another bit of the story that was not his to tell but he had long since deduced and decided there was nothing for it, “... a  _ safe _ word.”

“Sherlock, are you getting out?” Mycroft demanded from the front of the van.

At first, Q did not react.  His face betrayed nothing.

Then he sighed and whispered the most private thing in his life into his older brother’s ear.

Sherlock unhooked Q’s fingers from his wrist and laid his arm gently across his belly.  The energy that had sustained Q in those moments fled, and he closed his eyes. 

“Won’t need directions, Mycroft,” Sherlock said loudly once Q had settled again.  “It’s the old Compton Estate. I remember you being quite taken with it when we visited.  Not surprising you bought it. Did you wait until they both died or did you con it out of the old widow?”

“That was over 30 years ago.  You were three!”

“As though that ever mattered.” 

Sherlock pulled open the door and alighted from the van, coat swirling about him.  “I’ll bring your agent to Watlington,” he said to Q. To John, “There are no better hands for my brother than yours.”

With that, he shut the door.  The last thing John saw through the back windows as the van pulled from the kerb was Sherlock Holmes dashing across the road and into the darkness.

 

* * *

 

“Wondered when you’d show up,” James murmured. 

There stood Herself, precisely as he remembered her, dressed in one of those dark suits she’d always favoured like it was a coat of armour.  Even in death, she wore her arrogance, pride, and determination around her like she was Alexander the Great reviewing his vast army before conquering the great Persian king.  

“Contrary to what you believe, not everything’s always about you, 007.”

“You’re a bloody figment of  _ my _ imagination, who the fuck else would it be about?” he snapped. 

M merely raised an eyebrow in response.

James’ fingers curled around the top of the glass of whisky Alec had sat on the table next to him hours ago.  He wanted it. Desperately. He wanted the whole sodding bottle and another after that, but even the smell -- sweet, buttery, earthy -- made him ill.

“You won’t escape this time by crawling into the bottom of a bottle.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he growled.

“In point of fact, I don’t!” she snapped.  “What were you thinking, 007?! The future of MI6, of the security of this nation, was in your hands to protect and you failed.  You walked away. Left him to die.”

“He didn’t give me a choice!” James raged.  “And now he just sits there. Doesn’t say a sodding thing.   Judging me for that choice. The rest of you won’t shut up, but he won’t say a bloody thing.” 

Tears filled the shade’s eyes and James looked away.

“The only one judging you is yourself.  Haven’t you figured that out yet? Christ!  Here I thought I’d finally got something right with you, 007.  Given the orphan someplace … some _ one _ to call home.”  M’s sigh of resignation was thick with disappointment and disgust.  

She stood between them, James and the illusion of his Quartermaster, and gestured at the bloodied form.  “Look at him,” she ordered.

“No.”

“Talk to him!”

James’ eyes bored into hers, and for the first time in his life, he refused her order.  

“Kindly, fuck off.”

“Not possible at the moment, I’m afraid.”

M had faded and in her place stood a tall, lean man with dark curly hair clad in an equally dark coat with a blue scarf wrapped about his neck.

James blinked hard.  This was not one of his Ghosts of Christmas Past.  How the fuck did Q’s brother get in the flat? He looked around the room and found Alec standing in front of the kitchen.  Though his weapon was held loosely at his side, Alec radiated protective tension.

“Why the fuck are you here, Sherlock?” James murmured.  “If I feel the need for you or your awkward attempts at pity, I’ll call at Baker Street.” 

“A rather callous but ultimately unnecessary statement as pity and sympathy are quite the opposite of my intent.”

“Get to the point or get the fuck out,” Alec growled.  His weapon was no longer at his side but aimed at the consulting detective.

“Ugh.  It’s a wonder he’s managed to keep his sanity working with you lot,” he said with a dismissive wave for Alec’s threat, not the least bit intimidated, and turned back to James.  “I’m here to collect-” 

“What?” snapped James, shaking off the soporific haze his visitations had lulled him into.  “Here to collect what?! Whatever of Q’s you’re after, forget it. I’ll not part with anything of his.”

The shade on the sill shifted, drawing James’ gaze back to it.  Its cold, dead eyes -- so different from the warm green of his living self -- bore into James’ soul, and James finally conceded he would be  _ forever _ haunted by this ghost.  

There would be no escape, and the knowledge of that drained James utterly.

“Is  _ that _ why you’re here?!” Alec demanded, stalking toward Sherlock.  “For some trinket! That’s it. You’re done. Never should’ve let you in.”

“He’s alive!” Sherlock barked.  

Alec stuttered to a halt.  “The fuck?”

“Q is _alive_.”

Half a heartbeat later James was out of his chair and had Sherlock up against the wall beside the window sill, casted arm pressed to his throat and a gun barrel pressed to the centre of his forehead.  

Alec had missed one.  

“Do  _ not _ lie to me,” James snarled.  His finger slipped from the trigger guard to the trigger itself.

“James …” Alec cautioned.

Sherlock stood motionless.  Tense. 

The shade reached for James, its hand settling on his wrist.

It whispered just one word before fading away.  A simultaneous echo of that which Sherlock uttered. 

“Vetruvian.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “If you have consumed what I have laboured and invested in to create, and if you have found any enjoyment in it, please tell me so that I can recharge enough to do this again.” ~ kdreeva via Tumblr
> 
>  
> 
> Your comments to date are so very appreciated. They really do revive the writing spirit and spur me to compose as quickly as I can.


	16. Lambing Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Q’s body’s a roadmap of trauma. Injuries that don’t match up with what you indicated he suffered during the mission. More. Notably more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your continued comments and for your patience in waiting for this update. Both are terribly appreciated. I hope that the offering of this new chapter satisfies.
> 
>  
> 
> Again, my thanks to Boffin1710 for his neverending help and support in the writing of this story. A shout out to Springbok7, my cheerleader and beta who always manages to fit me in even when life is insanely crazy. Adore you both so very much.
> 
> Ashe, again, this is for you, love. <3

**Lambing storm:** A slight fall of snow in the spring in England.  


 

* * *

  
  


Sandwiched between Alec at his front and Sherlock at his back, James Bond stood motionless at the rear of the treatment room and watched, stone-faced, as Q tried to die.  

Again.

John Watson had been briefing him in the corridor on Q’s condition when alarms sounded from down the hall.  The army surgeon had taken off at a run, two Double-Os and a consulting detective on his heels, and with the aid of three nurses was now bustling about the boffin’s unconscious form doing everything he could to bring the Quartermaster back from the edge of death.

Ten days ago, James had watched Q go to his first death, and it had been the single most agonising moment of his life.

Until now.

A bag mask was followed by tubes and tapes and scopes and syringes and more medications rattled off than he could bear to keep up with.  All had been used during his own recoveries at one point or another after he’d been critically injured. It was something else again to witness them being used on Q.

Pale and broken and bloodied, Q’s body seized sluggishly as the paddles were put to him. 

James twitched in sympathetic response.  Alec, who’d been facing James, mumbling a constant flow of supportive …  _ something _ in his ear … instinctively curled a large, strong hand around James’ hip, grounding him lest he tear across the room to beat life back into Q’s heart himself.  

In his other ear, another deep, but less familiar, baritone sounded.  “We’d been experimenting with Newton’s Three Laws, my brother and I. Rocks and balls and eggs soon palled, but Mummy had forbidden us to use Redbeard in any more experiments.  Q was eager to be the final test subject. He was all of five, desperate to impress his elder brother, I suppose. I was ... imprecise in applying force to the small sleigh he was sat upon.  He crashed into a tree at the bottom of the hill. Blood everywhere. Broken limbs. He lay unconscious in hospital for two days. I thought I’d killed my little brother that afternoon. Never experimented on him again.” 

“Get to the point, Holmes,” Alec growled.

“He survived  _ that _ , Bond.  He’ll come through this,”  Sherlock hesitated a moment but then lay a leather-clad hand on James’ shoulder.  “John won’t let him go. And my brother doesn’t know how to give up.”

“Clear!”

The body beneath the paddles jerked with the second surge of electricity to the heart, and a moment later the single, monotonous tone that had been sounding like the seventh trumpet of the Apocalypse stopped, replaced by a rhythmic beat that was as unexpected as it was beautiful.

As though he had heard his brother’s words from wherever he had gone, Q tried to curl up in on himself on the bed , his groan of pain audible from beneath the bag mask.

James sagged in relief.  

“He’s strong, Q is,” Alec whispered in his ear, his arm, now quite tight around James’ waist, the only thing keeping him on his feet at that moment.  “Needs to be to put up with your shite.”

Mycroft had been lurking in the shadows of the room like the spectre of the British Government he was, eyes never leaving the figure of his youngest sibling.  

“Before you even ask, Bond -- why he is here instead of in a more traditional facility -- your Quartermaster was coherent enough at one point to give me a good indication that MI6 has been compromised.”

James' eyes snapped toward those shadows.

“I’ve informed M of that much, at least.  He wasn’t too pleased being awoken in the middle of the night.” Mycroft slowly stepped out into the light looking more haggard than he had in a long time, Sherlock noted.  

“Another traitor?” Alec demanded.

“It would seem.  I have not shared with Mallory that his Quartermaster is still alive, nor will I until I have a better sense of who has betrayed us,” Mycroft nodded toward John and the tangle of medical personnel still working on Q. “I’ll brief you once he’s settled and stable.  You’re owed a reunion with my brother, Bond. One that is long past due, I dare say.”

 

* * *

 

The morning sun had been up for hours and was filtering through the shades by the time James was finally left alone with Q.

_ Well, I say alone …  _

Turned out that particular phrasing was not unique to Q. 

Three nurses manned their stations just outside the door, each with their separate tasks to guarantee the Quartermaster’s condition remained stable.  Q was the only patient in residence, though James was learning that Mycroft Holmes would have ensured the same degree of care for his youngest brother, regardless.

“He’s running a bloody private hospital here,” John Watson had told him earlier, his tone caught somewhere between admiration and irritation.  “MRI scanner on top of the CT. Everything I could possibly need. Better equipped than Basti-- Christ! Why I’m even surprised?! This is Mycroft we’re talking about here.”

The facility was impressive.  The equal to some of the larger, private clinics James had seen throughout Europe in his time.  The room in which he sat at Q’s bedside was a unique blend of hospital efficiency and country estate posh.  The seating and atmosphere designed to comfort and soothe whilst still maintaining the clinical climate necessary for a clean, germ-free environment.  

And Q needed it.

Sepsis.

“CT and blood work indicate we caught it before it could affect any of his vital organs.  I aim to keep it that way, but Q is critically ill. The next 24 hours ...” John then outlined the treatment plan he had ordered.  Complex and aggressive, James appreciated that Watson had taken the time to answer his many questions, breaking things down in layman’s terms without making him feel like an idiot.  James had never paid much attention to his own medical care over the years, suffering through his extended stays in Medical with a minimum of patience. Escaping the moment he could stand on his own two feet without passing out.  Or triggering the alarms the wilier nurses had rigged up for some of the more recalcitrant and severely injured Double-Os.

For Q, he’d listen to chapter and verse and compose his own gospel if it was deemed necessary.

But there had been no reunion as Q had not yet regained consciousness.  

“To be expected.  Medications combined with the resuscitation shock and whatever he went through after everything went tits up for you in Paris.  He’ll be out for a while,” John said.

“ _ After _ things went- explain,” James insisted.

“Q’s body’s a roadmap of trauma.  Injuries that don’t match up with what you indicated he suffered during the mission.  More. Notably more,” John explained. “Burns from the explosion, yes, but there’s evidence of knife lacerations.  The crack to his head? Pistol-whipping most likely. Residual bruising around his neck … someone tried to strangle him to death.  Came damn near close to it, too. But then there are other things that don’t make sense. That bullet wound saw treatment. Stitched up by someone who knew how to make sutures yet unfamiliar with human anatomy, but Q didn’t do it.  The angle’s wrong. We found painkillers and antibiotics among the few things he had with him but, clearly, the medication wasn’t strong enough to combat …”

John sighed and rubbed his face, exhausted.  “Sherlock probably has Q’s entire timeline sussed out by now, so I’ll leave the explanations to him.  I know Mycroft needs to brief you, but-”

“It’s fine.  Send Holmes in,” James said.  He didn’t take his eyes from Q’s form as John rose from his chair, but he managed not to twitch at the weight of an unfamiliar hand on his shoulder.  He’d had only one brief meeting with Watson before, but after tonight he knew the doctor was a man he could trust. 

For himself and for Q.

“As a doctor, I’m supposed urge you to get what rest you can, Bond, but I’ve sat where you are once or twice with my own Holmes. I know it’s not as simple as that.”    

When the door to the room opened again several minutes later, it was not for the brother James had been expecting.

“Mycroft has been called away to be the ‘British Government’ for a tad.  Apparently, the world still progresses on around you no matter what is happening in your personal sphere,” Sherlock said, taking up space in the shadows at the back of the room ... watching, thinking. 

Neither spoke for long moments.

“Oh!  This must be where Mycroft brought him before!” Sherlock blurted out, breaking the silence that hung in the room and moved to stand at the foot of Q’s bed.   James didn’t openly acknowledge Sherlock’s presence but quietly noted anything that involved Q.

His priority.

“It never occurred to me until now that this is where Mycroft whisked him off to for treatment.”  Sherlock rambled, not to anyone in particular, more talking out loud to himself. “Q always had the most uncontrolled mind of us all.  He constantly struggled to find his footing. Processing all the input that poured in seemed an impossibility at times for him. He absorbed things like a sponge.”

A sponge.  As good a comparison as any.  James had known people with eidetic memories before, but Q’s … it was more than that.  He wasn’t just a repository of information. He took what he learned and processed it, analysed it until its significance and context was clear.  Q was a source of knowledge, not just data. James took Q’s hand in his. Running the pad of his thumb over the half-healed cuts on the ridges of his knuckles.  His index finger had been broken.

Fistfight.

“We did what we could to assist him in finding his footing.  Everything we tried seemed to only be a temporary stop gap.” Sherlock sighed.  Paused. Clearly trying to contain something emotional that was fighting to bubble up inside him.  

“Data. Voices.  Facts. All consuming.  He suffered. And to mitigate that suffering, he chose a path I mistakenly laid at his feet by example.  Overdosed on his first outing into trying to find a focused solution. I was an idiot. I should have seen...”   

Sherlock moved slowly to the opposite side of the bed directly into Bond’s line of sight as he kept talking.  

“I found him in his flat, barely alive.  Mycroft came immediately and spirited him off.  It was days before I finally managed to weasel out of him that Q’d survived.”

Sherlock reached out his hand, hesitating for a moment before letting the tip of his index finger lightly brush back a curl from his brother’s forehead.

“When I did see him again, something had changed.  It seemed he’d found ‘his’ solution to quiet the turmoil inside.  He was steadier than he’d been in years. Focused. Strong.” Bond slowly looked up and his eyes met Sherlock’s.  “It wasn’t until much later I deduced  _ what _ it was that brought my brother to that quiet place he desperately needs to survive himself.”

Sherlock straightened to his full height and looked critically upon James.  Grey eyes penetrating. “I don’t know you, Bond. And I don’t claim to always understand my brother, but -- though it pains me to admit -- he is the most sensible of us, and as such, I trust his judgement.  And in that judgement, Q has chosen you to fight at his side as he slays the demons, physical and otherwise.”

Be worthy.

It hung in the room, unspoken but understood.

Until the moment slipped away with Sherlock’s voice, sharply tossed towards the doorway.

“Come in or go away, Mycroft.  You know how Mummy feels about listening outside doorways.   Perhaps Bond here can give you tips on effective corridor surveillance.  Even your breathing’s too loud to be suitably covert.”

Mycroft slipped through the partially open door, long-suffering annoyance clear on his face.

“I was merely giving you some privacy for this …” he gestured feebly at the tableau in front of him, searching for the right words, “ … tender moment.  How atypically emotive of you, brother mine.”

Fingers still tangled with Q’s James rose and faced both men.  “Bicker in the corridor,  _ not _ in here.”  Q hadn’t said much about his brothers, but their endless sniping at each other, and the frustration it caused Q featured prominently in what little he had shared.  “I’ll not allow it to interfere with his recovery.” 

Mycroft took the measure of the man who stood at his brother’s bedside.  The hard, glacial look in his eyes. The possessive way he held Q’s hand.  His protective stance next to the bed. Loose-limbed but lethal. Contained and unyielding.  

“You’re right, of course,” Mycroft said, conceding to this man his brother had chosen in a rare moment of wisdom.  “Never sat well with Q, our banter-”

“Contempt.  Derision, ” Sherlock interjected with a bored air.

“Holmes!”  James’ growl was accompanied by a glare that silenced the sharing of any further synonyms.

“Your partner … your rules,” Sherlock yielded with a nod and started for the door.  To give them privacy or to continue to snipe at his brother, James didn’t care so long as they got the bloody fuck out!

Five minutes.  At this point, James would settle for just five minutes alone with Q and had already turned his attention back to his lover when Mycroft shoved a blood-stained field notebook in his face.

“What do you make of-”  James snagged Mycroft’s wrist in a crushing grip, effectively cutting off whatever else the bureaucrat had been about to say.  

“ _ Don’t _ .”  James’ order was calm and icy. 

“Idiot!” Sherlock smirked, returning to the bed to watch the interchange like it was a theatre performance.  “Mycroft, even I know to approach a Double-O with caution. Do break it, Bond, his wrist. Would serve him right.”

“Next time, perhaps.”  James let go of Q’s hand and plucked the notebook from Mycroft’s fingers.    He recognised the A6 field notebook as one of the many Q had scattered about the flat and in his office at Six, immediately available for him to sketch designs and jot down his thoughts.  

“Shocking as I’m sure this will sound coming from me, tech’s not conducive to everything,” Q had explained when James had asked about the practically Luddite approach.

Releasing Mycroft’s wrist, James opened the booklet and thumbed through the pages that were written in the scrawl he knew to be Q’s.  

“We found it on his person,” Mycroft said with a nod for his youngest brother, flexing his hand but pointedly not rubbing his wrist.  “As you can see, it’s written in some sort of code, but neither Sherlock nor I have been able to decipher it. Perhaps you --”

“No. It’s his, but I can’t read it.”  James looked more closely at a series of pages toward the back of the notebook that were separated from the rest by several dozen blank pages.  “Here.” James flipped back to the last page before the break, turning the book so Mycroft could see it. It contained a schematic for a new sniper scope Q had thought up in the shower one morning.  “He was working on this on the train to Paris. But these,” he returned to the back of the notebook and flipped through them one at a time, “are new.”

The pages were filled with nothing but code, not a schematic or blueprint among them.  Not even a doodle. And Q  _ always _ doodled in his notebooks.  “Keeps my fingers busy whilst my brain parses what it wants to do,” Q had said of the silly sketches.   

James explained as much to the other Holmeses.  “Whatever all this is,” he tapped the page “… it’s relevant.”

“And until my brother wakes up, beyond our ken, I’m afraid.” Mycroft sighed and took the notebook Bond handed him.  “Damn it! Time is of the essence, and we’re already a fortnight behind. Who knows what the traitor has managed to set in motion since learning of the Quartermaster’s death, but we can’t trust this to just any cryptographer.”

“R.” 

“I beg your pardon?”

A twitch of Q’s hand in his pulled James’ attention away from the conversation.  Q looked different than he had a few minutes ago. He was no longer unnaturally quiet in his bed.  He was restless. Twitchy. James' eyes darted to the monitors -- John had told him a bit of what to look for to help ease his mind -- but saw nothing on them to indicate a serious change. 

“Bond?”

“What, damn it?!”  He looked over his shoulder at Mycroft and saw the questioning look on the man’s irritating face.  James started to understand a bit of the annoyance that laced Q’s tone in those few times he spoke of his eldest brother.  Demanding, interfering prick. “R. Q’s second in command. If anyone can decipher what’s in that book, she can.”

“Ah, yes.  The redoubtable Siobhan Wilde.  But can she be trusted?”

“R’s been looking out for Q for years.  Long before he became Quartermaster,” James explained as he tried to figure out what was going on with Q who had taken to mumbling in French, scattered phrases and half-formed thoughts that made no sense to James. 

_ “J’ai trop chaud ...les eaux sont froides.” _

“She’s as much mother hen and annoying sibling as she is a colleague.  If R’s the mole … No, I trust her.” 

_ “Je veux nager dans la rivière … J'aime la Meuse ...” _

“Of course!” Sherlock exclaimed, clapping his hands in front of him and stepping back from the bed where he’d been looming over Q, trying to make sense of what he’d been muttering.  “Oh, you are brilliant, are you not, little brother.”

“Sherlock, what are you doing?” Mycroft demanded when he was grabbed by the arm and pulled from the room. 

“Come along, brother dear.  You’ve your lead to follow, and now I have mine.  Let’s leave Q to his convalescence and Bond to his hovering, shall we?” Sherlock said.

And with that, the Holmes brothers were finally gone, Mycroft’s protests and arguments lingering in the air until the door shutting behind them finally left the room in relative silence.

James heaved a sigh of relief and shook his head, amazed.  In seeing the physical commotion wrought by the elder brothers, James finally began to understand a bit of the chaos inside Q’s head that he worked so hard to manage and keep in check, and the boundless admiration and respect he already had for his lover grew.

“You’re bloody amazing,” he said as he studied Q’s face, marred as it was with lacerations, bruises, and burns.  What had he been through? How had he survived? So many unanswered questions.

Q had settled some now that the others had gone but continued to twitch occasionally and mumble about the river.  James hadn’t known Q could speak French. How had it never come up at work? At home? “Probably speak half a dozen others, too.”  

He thought he’d known so much about his lover, his friend, but ... 

James pressed a kiss to Q’s fevered brow and whispered into the flushed skin, “I want to hear them all, Q.  I want to hear you call me an arrogant, stroppy, overbearing wanker in every last one of them.”

Please.

The quiet beeping of the monitors and the soft surussus of Q’s head against the cotton pillowcase as he twitched in his fevered state were James’ only answers.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “If you have consumed what I have laboured and invested in to create, and if you have found any enjoyment in it, please tell me so that I can recharge enough to do this again.” ~ kdreeva via Tumblr
> 
> Comments are truly a balm to a writer's tired soul. They rejuvenate and motivate. They are priceless.


End file.
